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20090501-DSC_0206-2.jpg

Winona County Historical Society Museum

Matthews003

Flower Girl

[Alan_P]

Hi Everyone,

Here is my latest up for comments.





Alan

[Mhayes]

Hi Alan,

I'm not sure how you came about with the color correction you did? I have done Curves with the gray dropper and also tried a Levels Adjustment to each channel and neither came out with the colors you did. The original looks more natural and a Levels Adjustment would have tweaked it. All of the photos from this family really need very little color correction. Your version looks like you have painted over the bride's skin and it looks splotchy and dirty. I think the little girl in the center has a very light pink dress and it almost looks like her eyes are blue and not black.

Most of our photos are really in need of color correcting, but in this case all of them were not that far off for color There maybe some where the color has migrated into other areas and that will have to be individually worked on. I would work on getting a more even look to the skin.

Margie

[Alan_P]

Hi Margie,

This was my intitial color correction. I duplicated the layer and set the duplicate to multiply. I then did a levels correction by adjusting the highlight, shadow and midpoint sliders of each color layer. I set a white reference point on the white shawl on the lady on the left, a black reference on the inside top of the fireplace and a neutral reference on one of the fireplace brickt. This left a lot of blue and pink that looks like color bleeding. That is what I tried to correct after the intial correction.




Alan

[Mhayes]

Alan,

I don't know why you would use the blending mode of "Multiply" before you have color corrected? Even then, using the Multiply would be for a photo that lacks density in either midtones and highlights and that step would happen later in your restoring. Doing a blending mode first on this photo is a recipe for a disaster. Your 2nd step to move the sliders for each channel---best as the 1st step. Doing the Levels Adjustment by bringing the sliders in would have been enough. I'm not sure why you decided to use all three eye droppers after that as the results made the photo worse. By using all three eye droppers, you are basically over riding the first result to try to fine tune, but instead the colors gets worse. I may use the eye droppers in Curves, but I very rarely use all three. The white eye dropper I don't like as it usually blows the highlights and not that wild about the black, but in some situations they work. I like finding neutral gray best and then using the gray eye dropper. In this case you really only need to do a Level Adjustment with the sliders or an auto Curves Adjustment.

I noticed something interesting by doing your Multiply mode first and then a Levels Adjustment. Take a look at your histogram and the bar shaded in black that from the left shows the black point slider, the middle showing the midtone slider , and the far right the white point slider. Notice all the white gaps now showing in the histogram? That means that by doing the Multiply first for a tonal change it has already caused the photo to lose information. The next move with Levels you will lose even more.

You mentioned having Katrin Eismann’s book Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Take a look at Chapter 2 and it will help make things clearer.

Margie

[Johnboy]

Alan,

This one is a real toughy to get the color balance plus there is a haze damage of some kind on all or at least parts of the photo. More on this later.

I downloaded your original and did a Curves color adjustment according to a tutorial from Glenna B.
Here is the link:  http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,1304.0.html

Noting that there was some kind of color cast I tried to correct that by following a tut from a former OPR president, Christine Pentecost. I was trying to get rid of the haze on the bride's face.
Here is the link: http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,1412.0.html

This gave me a great B&W photo but color come back after I adjusted the Opacity to 0. Some later playing makes me think 7 or 8% might be better. I was just looking at the overall appearance of the photo. Anyway something to play with.

Then I did a second curves adjustment as per Glenna's instructions above. Only this time I just used the points already established. New points might give different results. I did this just to see what would happen and liked the result.

Then I returned to the Reflection Reduction tut on Page 261 in Katrin Eismann's Photoshop Restoration & Retouching in attempt to get rid of the haze on the bride's face. I first tired this on a selection of the bride's head. Then decided to do the whole photo. (First scratched the selection results.) The black slider was set to 72 and moved the grey point back to 1.16. Just thought they looked good. Other settings may work better. So here is the resulting photo from the above playing.



Note on the bride's face there are 2 areas that show good skin color without haze. This is where she needs to be but I am not sure where to take it at this point. (See photo below)

I think there may be something similar going on with the woman's face on our left. (See photo below) I think there is cyan in her face although the color around here looks about right.

The child sitting on the bride's lap seems to have a fuzzy or out of focus look to part of her face and clothes. I am not sure what is going on there as the rest of the photo around her seems to be sharp to me.



I note that this a totally different approach than Margie suggested. You might play with both ideas or a combination to see which works best. As I am looking at the Preview before I post this, what I am showing here maybe a little overkill (Looks a little too red). I was not looking for a perfect answer but an attempt to show a possible technique.

Good luck.

Johnboy

[Mhayes]

Johnboy, I have no problem with what you have done, except the photo looks too yellow. If you look at all the wedding photos for this family in Tess's gallery, you will see that they all lean to the cool side and not to a warm golden color. The other thing is that when you download the original from the forum, it doesn't come with a color profile intact. Your skin tones and the tile looks good.

Margie

[Hannie]

Hi Alan,

Margie is right about the multiply mode, just a levels adjustment and curves with grey dropper gives a cleaner result. 
Some of the blue dyes have bled and the skin color has a little too much cyan and not enough yellow.
It would be better to use layer masks to adjust these things because the rest of the image does not need more yellow.

Hannie

[Alan_P]

Hi Everyone,

I redid the photo using Hannie's suggestions. I did a levels correction using the black and white eyedroppers. I added a mask on the skin and did a color balance correction.

The corrections I did on the first try came out of Katrin Eissman's book. In chapter 2 there is a section on Using Multiply to build density. The note on the same section says to experiment with different methods. I did that and thought multiply looked best. After redong it I realize that I did not pay enough attention to the additional fringing introduced by the multiply. In chapter 4 in the section Rebuilding Color Information she does a levels adjustment after adjusting the color channels. The color balancing using levels was the technique used in chapter 4 Balancing neutral tones with levles. I am still learning when to apply the different methods.





Thanks for all the input,

Alan

[Mhayes]

Hi Alan,

Bingo! This looks beautiful!

Margie

[Pat]

Alan I am currently working on another one for this family and I hope it turns out as well as yours.  Great job!

Pat