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By the dawn's early light

Fountain Picture

Nano

Portrait

[Leah M]

Hi again

I have a pic of a cute baby .. honeycomb patterned, red colour cast, faded, and that's before it got damaged in Katrina!

So far, I have managed to remove the honeycomb and the colour cast .. hoping that fixing those would reveal some workable original colours.  What I have is a pic with very little difference in colours at all.  Pink couch, pink baby face, pink dress and dark green mess.  There is a fairly undamaged area in her face which kinda confirms those colours and lack of variation even in the original pic.

Added to that, the central area of baby where her hands should be is non-existant.  I can see absolutely nothing beneath the damage no matter what colour modes I look at.

Can anyone see something that I am missing here?

If there really is nothing there to salvage .. what would you do with that area?

Original -
WIP -

Your brilliant ideas welcomed

Leah M

[Ausimax]

Leah M,

You have done a great job so far to get rid of the honeycomb pattern, and colour cast, what I would suggest is to restore the face and head and as far down the front as you can, then either crop, or as I think I would do and use a vignette to focus the attention to the face.

I tend to think the face is the important part of a photo like that, the background and other body parts would be secondary, I had a baby recently with total damage to feet and hands and a crop was the only option.

Thats only my opinion, but hopefully of help to you.

Max

[glennab]

Hi Leah,

I can't see anything that you're missing.  I tried every filter and effect I know, and nothing brought out any more detail.  As for what to do with the unidentifiable areas, I'd check with admin on that.  Both of Max's suggestions have merit.  Great work so far -- but I'm not convinced you can do much other than work with the color to get that more even and send it back.

GG

[Leah M]

Thanks guys

I'm starting to feel like this little one is becoming a bit Monty Python-ish.  It's feeling out of proportion, but I think part of  that's a balance thing to do with the missing hands.  I've deliberately done as little as possible to the face.

I get the feeling that she is wearing a top underneath that summer top, long sleeves?  If you think I'm right, please don't tell me it's *pink*

Anyways .. here's where I am so far and not too sure where to go next.



It's quite exciting to see only two left on each of the difficult lists

Leah M

[kiska]

Leah, great job.

About a top under the sundress. Being from the South and knowing how sticky hot it gets around the Gulf Coast; I would bet she does not have anything on under the dress. An educated GUESS.

[Kenny]

I love what you've done with it. Less is more when doing faces, in my opinion.

 The hands are going to be a tough call. The focus of the picture is the baby's face. Now that it's cleaned up, the missing hands are what your eyes are drawn to. If I were doing this for someone I could talk to, I would suggest putting in something to hide them. A blanket, perhaps. But, we don't have access to the owners, so we're stuck with trying to figure out what to do in these cases.

I do feel something has to be done about them, because it draws the focus away from the face. I just don't know what to suggest.


Food for thought...


Kenny

[milanab]

are you sure there isn't a teddy bear or doll in front of her?  typical toddler prop for photos i honestly think i see ears and the shape of a bear sitting sort of sideways on her lap...any body else?

[Kenny]

This one is a toughie. I see what you're talking about with a possible prop, but I can't tell what it might be. If I were doing this one for someone I could communicate with, I would suggest putting in a teddy bear or something to cover the damage. It can't stand out too much, though, because it would draw the focus away from the baby's face.


Tough call on this one. Maybe try putting in some props and post it here to get opinions.


Kenny

[Kenny]

Basically anything added into the blank spot is just speculation of what was there originally. If doing this for someone I know, this would be my suggestion for a solution:



It's not too overpowering in my opinion, The position of the baby's arms are perfectly matched for holding a bouquet, and it fills in the blank spot.

However, that may be using a little too much creative license for us here. Maybe Dave will read this and offer his 2 cents.


Kenny

[Leah M]

Thanks so much for your replies and ideas.

It's just so unfortunate that both hands are missing.  One would be relatively easy to disguise .. but both?

I see two options at the moment

1) To rearrange her clothing so that her hands appear to be buried into the ruffles .. kind of bunched up on her lap a bit.

2) Play with  a prop so it doesn't hog the limelight too much.

Umm .. do we have a 'Mission Impossible' category anywhere here?

Seriously .. thanks again for helping.

Leah M

ROFL!  While I was posting .. so was Kenny!

More PINK! 

But yes .. something like that could work, the only problem being the integrity of the photo which is pretty well impossible to guess at.

[Ausimax]

I think I would be going for a 4x4 crop, and put the effort into achieving the best result with the info available.



Max

[Kenny]

The only thing about a 4x4 crop is it won't fit in a frame.



Kenny

[OPRAng]

Leah's feeling about the integrity of the photo and the memory is right on the money. The first thing baby's mom will say is 'where on earth did those flowers come from', rather than--'she was so cute back then'. It will actually take away from the restoration and even worse--the memory.

We've said it before and we'll say it again--it is OK not to make things perfect. Leaving damage is way better than creating what was never there.

The crop is OK too, just make sure your distribution coordinator knows what you are doing with the image for quality control reasons. 

Thanks for everyone's work and for supporting each other...

You are the best! All of you!!!


Angela