Retread from Illinois

[jacobdj]

My name is Dennis Jacobsen. I'm 65 and retired. I live in Columbia, IL, along the Mississippi River, near St. Louis, MO.

The flood of 93 visited the bottom lands of our county.

I like this forum already. Many friendly people with exceptional talent. I consider myself an intermediate Photoshop user, but looking at the damage to so many of the photos here leads me to a lesser estimation of my retouching skills.

My retouching has been family photos. Most of them needed spotting and color corrections. A few had tearing and creasing problems. But nothing like the damage I see here. This is going to be a challenge. With your help, hopefully I can provide some assistance.

Regards,

Dennis

[weewood]

Dennis, We are here to help. Welcome aboard. Regards, David

[glennab]

Greetings, Dennis

Welcome from Florida!

I suspect that, other than a few professional retouchers, we were all daunted by these challenges at first (I still am, but I just plow in anyway!). I was terrified to post my first attempt, because I'd chosen a difficult one, and I was sure I'd get taunted for my lack of skill.  Never happened.  Many volunteers jumped in with great feedback and suggestions, and I felt as if I were with kindred souls. If you have any issues, questions, problems, be sure to post, and you'll get all the help you need.

This truly is a great group, talented, helpful, a tad loopy and lots of fun. I'm glad you've joined us, and I'll look for you on the forum.

GK

[Hannie]

Hi Dennis, so glad you've joined us, hope to see your posts on the forum soon!

Hannie

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Hi Dennis and welcome to the forum. You'll get plenty of encouragement and help here.

[Mhayes]

Hi Dennis,

Welcome to the forum. We have all been in your shoes when it comes to thinking that the photos look a lot harder than most examples of photo restoration. Our grading system for Easy: Able to tell if photo is of a human, animal or building. Intermediate Level: 1 arm and 1 leg visible and 3/4 of the face showing. Difficult: Not a clue as to what you are looking at! I'm teasing of course!  >:D Best advice is to start with an easy photo and work your way up and look through some of the past threads and the tutorials for help. It's amazing some of the tips that will make your work so much easier. Last, but the best tip of all is to post your photo for feedback on the forum. Stick with us and we will have you asking for the difficult ones!  ;D

Margie

[schen]

Yeah! Another volunteer from Illinois.  I am sure there are many but they are kind of keeping quiet.

[Johnboy]

Dennis,

Welcome to the forum and OPR. I too am retired or as you say retreaded. Don't worry about your skills as everyone said we all help out here. When I first started I knew what the Patch tool did and figured that would be OK to start, and it was until I got to the background of my first restore then I was creating masks and gradient backgrounds with the help of the good forum folks. I also had saved a PDF tutorial on how to create one of these masks so that part only took me 5 attempts (learning curve, don't panic yet  :)). With all the help that is available you will be just as crazy as the rest of us. Oh, about Margie's grading system. There may be more truth in that that she lets on. You've seen what's their galleries. You too in no time will be saying why did I choose this one. That's when it is time to post and turn the eagle eyes loose on the project. This is one place were you can use what you know and ask for help for the rest of it.

Johnboy