next »

Total Members: 1579
New This Month: 8
New This Week: 2
New Today: 1

Young Man

Dugan009

Smiler

Girl in yellow

[lurch]

This little sweetie had so much color contamination it was hard to find 'real' colors to correct from. What I did was color correct both the original and reference photos and then wing it. Now I need some judgment on the color winging-it process (as well as any other details that might pop out to an independent eye).

Here's the original:


And the foot reference:


And my WIP as it stands now:


By the way, I tried out Jonas' frequency separation (sort of) on this one and it worked a charm. Didn't save much in the way of time, but it did allow working on the overall contours independent of all the little cracks.

About her eyes - they look light to me in the originals, but color and tone correction made them come out brown. Any thoughts on this? Maybe there's another photo with the same subject, or maybe there's a lurking owner who can be asked . . .

[Mhayes]

Lurch,

Great job on the repair! I think the baby's eyes are blue. I took the original and duplicated, then went to Layer>New>Mode=Overlay and checked the box for "Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray). Back on the Layers Pallet, I changed my color mode to "Difference." Now the photo will show areas that are almost black which pin points areas of neutral gray. Next I used the Color Sample Tool to pick 3 areas on the photo that were almost black. Sometimes it can help to do a threshold adjustment layer to see what area turn black first. One good spot that I picked was the corner of the eye on your right--other places in the hair. I then went to a Curves (Turn off the Difference layer or discard) Adjustment and used the middle eye dropper for gray and pick the corner spot in the eye that I marked earlier. I did not use either the black or white eye droppers as I think the gray only came closer to what I think the original looked like. The dress is pink, but my background came out more of light green. With this adjustment I do not have the brownish/red cast.



Great repair on the dress!

Margie

[glennab]

Hi Lurch

I've played and played with this little one, and the best I could do was to get her skin tone to balance.  When I did that, it left some ugly color casts elsewhere, but it did show that she has blue eyes.  I have a feeling she's going to need masking and a lot of adjusting before she looks color-balanced.  What a bear.  I haven't come across another with this level of color difficulty.  Sorry I'm not much help, but I'm not sure where else to go with the color.  Hopefully one of our gurus will jump in.



Cheers!

GK

[lurch]

Thanks GK and Margie. You've helped convince me that the baby's eyes are blue or green or gray - definitely not brown.

Glenna, because of the problem you ran into with color balancing affecting different areas differently, I just took it down to grayscale and re-colored the whole thing. Masked off the different pieces and used a gradient map (LOVE those) on each, trying to find some real colors to base the gradients on. Finding those colors was a challenge in itself. First few tries yielded, variously, a neon pink dress with too much blue in it, a backdrop that was brick red at the darkest, one that was sickly greenish, all of which went horribly with each other and the baby's complexion, which itself may be too swarthy if she's blue-eyed. Then there's the rug. I've used gradient maps for skin and hair for quite a while now; this is the first time I've done it on the whole image. Works amazingly well, and now I could make her dress puce if I chose . . .

[lurch]

How does this look? Pinked up her dress a bit, made her complexion fairer, and neutralized the background a bit. Oh - changed her eyes to blue also . . .

[kiska]

Looks good. Might need to soften the red of her eyes a little.

[Hannie]

Hi Lurch, you have done a beautiful job on this little cutie!

(great tip Kiska)

 

Hannie

[klassylady25]

I only see one thing that jumps out; there appears to be a 5 o'clock shadow on the little one.

[Mhayes]

Good call on the shadow as I believe what you see in the original is dirt. Since this is a studio photo the lightening would be even and no noticeable shadows--true also around the eye on your right. Otherwise  looking really good.

Margie

[gypsy72]

Looks good. Might need to soften the red of her eyes a little.

and maybe the red around her lips a little bit too. she looks like she's wearing lipstick. there is definitely definition around the lips, but i think that red may look better as a darker pink skin tone....  great job on the restore though!!

[glennab]

lurch, other than the color issues on her face that others have mentioned, she looks incredible.  You did such a wonderful job coloring the dress. I've never used a gradient mask, but will have to check that out (especially now that I'm signed up for a year of Kelby Training!).  It worked so well on this little beauty.  Great job!

GK