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Beautiful Girl

Vietnam

Downtown Tampa, FL

Little Princess

[RosyBijou]

Max, this is looking really terrific!  A little technique that I learned in a Photoshop class might help you finish off the color balances here.  It's a combination of three adjustment layers:  Levels, then Color Balance, then Hue/Sat.  Sherry (our instructor), called it the sandwich technique -- and it's really effective.

Here is a link to a picture that I applied the technique to... I did it on a landscape snapshot, but it's especially effective for warming up and enhancing skin tones: http://picasaweb.google.com/RosyBijou/Ed2GoIntermediatePhotoshopClass/photo#5003185659080082594 scroll to right for the enhanced picture (and then one more to right for a  screenshot of the three mighty layers.) 

What's nice about this is that it's totally non-destructive and infinitely editable.   If you want to isolate one of the adjsutments to the background, just mask it...

[kstruve]

Max,

Looking great as always!  The boy looks really good.  To me, the background color looks pretty good, but it has lost some of its variation.  You can add back some variation by creating a new layer with a mask, so that it only affects the background, fill it with white (the color can be anything - its going to be replaced anyway, but you need a color there for the next step).  Then set your foreground and background colors to white and black, respectively, go to Filter>Render>Clouds.

This is what I mean by your background and foreground colors:


Then change that new layer's blending mode to Overlay and adjust it's opacity to about 30%.

I think that with age, the whole image has shifted to the green and lost some saturation.  I played with it for a few minutes this morning to show you how I would go forward with this image:


I also evened out his shirt color and blurred the new wrinkles on the right-hand side.  Keep up the good work, Max!

Kurt

[glennab]

Max and Kurt

One thing that pops out at me is that in Max's version the boy has a bluish cast which doesn't appear in Kurt's.  Kurt, what adjustments did you make?

Max, the restoration looks wonderful.  Isn't it nice to actually have a face that's not covered with gunk?

Kerry, your "sandwich" technique is impressive.  Something else I need to print out and keep in mind.

GG

[kstruve]

Glenna,

I applied two adjustment layers, Hue/Saturation and Color Balance - much like Kerry's suggestion.

Kurt

[Ausimax]

Hi folks,

Kerry,

That sandwich technique looks like a winner to me, the result on the landscape was really dramatic, will definitely be giving it a try.

Kurt,

Thanks for the idea of the clouds for the background, I have played around with the effect working through a tutorial some time ago, but had not given a thought to using it on the background, had been giving a thought to making a brush with a cloudy sort of blob (trust me to think of the hard way), that is my problem I learn all about these great methods and then promptly forget how to do them or where the tutorial is.

The colour adjustment looks great also, I hadn't got to that yet, for some reason when I have made colour corrections early in a restoration it has resulted in some weird effects on multiple layers, at that time I was light on RAM and that may have been the main cause, so I got into the habit of leaving it till I had all the damage under control before colour correcting.
Here is one for the experts, working on this image I had a background layer, a dupe layer and a layer I was working on the shirt on, and there was a patch on his left shoulder that no tool would work on, yes I was on the right layer, first thing I checked, no it wasn't a hidden selection the second thing I checked, I switched to the dupe layer and the same result, yet when I moved to the background layer everything worked, I did a save, closed the image and reopened and it was OK.

This has happened to me several times, or suddenly a tool won't work and the only cure seems to be to close and reopen the image, has anybody any clue as to what causes this?

Glenna,

You are right about how great it is to work on an image without major damage to the face, and more importantly in my case the hair, that is my bug-bear, HAIR, I can't do HAIR.
And the green cast is a pain, the yellow stain was also a pain used Katrin Eismann's method and it took 16 Hue/saturation layers to get rid of it, there was a heap of colour damage visible in channels that I could not get rid of so I had to clone it out or paint it out.

Thank you all for your help and ideas, it always amazes me how much I learn from you people.

Max

[Ausimax]

Back again,

Tried out Kerry's and Kurt's methods, not with a lot of success, I seem to have a low confusion threshold, when I have two or more things to adjust in unison I can't seem to get the balance right, I was just going round in circles, adjust this one, go and re-adjust the other one, and so on.

So I had to resort to my usual method of adjusting each element of the image separately, hopefully it is getting nearer the money. Have a look and tell me what you think.




Colours look a bit washed out, must have forgot to convert to sRGB.

Max

[Ausimax]

OK Folks,

Where are all the spare eyes?        I was hoping for some views on this one.

Max

[kiska]

Looks good. He might be a bit too yellow?

[glennab]

Hi Max

My spare eyes have been at work and at my husband's shop every night working on my car (the freeze plugs are all useless, so we're taking the top of the engine apart and replacing the plugs).  By the time I get home I have the energy to clean up and hit the mattress!

I did look at your restoration at lunch yesterday and the only thing I saw was a bit of a bluish color cast.  I think the restoration is fantastic.  The color would probably be adjusted at the time of printing, but you could adjust it yourself by using your Curves eyedroppers.  Maybe the highlight dropper at the white of his eyes and the mid-tones at anything that should be grey - hair or eyebrows possibly.  I think the colors in Kurt's version has the flesh tones just about perfect. (I'd asked him earlier in this thread how he'd gotten the colors so true and he said he'd used hue/saturation and color balance.) As usual there are several ways to get there.

Keep on keepin' on -- you're doing your usual great job!

GG

[Ausimax]

Kiska, Glenna thanks for the comments, the colour is not too bad in the original image, I think I forgot to convert to sRGB or something, when I posted it the colours are all washed out and I was too lazy to do it all again.

This is another one of those quandary's we find ourselves with, the original photo looked as if it may have been a faded photo even before it was damaged, will the restoration to full colour again be too much of a change for the owner? Rather like when they "Restored" the paintings in the Sistine Chapel to their original colour and after being faded and discoloured for Centuries,  it looked like garish modern art.
Just a thought, thats the trouble with proxy restorations, if you were doing it directly for the owner you could sort out all these issues in advance.

Thanks again,

Max