Input please

[G3User]

Still a WIP

Not sure about the sleeve of the woman's dress, whether what appears to be the inside edge is true or just damage. It results in a very wide sleeve if it is correct. Feminine input obviously required :cool:

Still to finish the sleeve, outline the lapels of the man's jacket, play with the color of his face and lips and both eye colors etc.

I have done this on a repaired B/W layer and applied color on masked layers. I have seen references to converting to CMYK and using masked curves to achieve the same result. Anyone had experience with both methods and like to comment?

Athol

[Hannie]

At the risk of having more mysterious pains and aches appear (you really don't think I'd go for that "the dolls have been unraveled" story now did you?) I decided to reply...

It may be that the shadow that you have placed along the side of her arm (on the body part) makes the arm look a little strange.  Look at the original, there really is no shading along side the obvious crease.  You may want to adjust the outside line (left, left arm) of the sleeve some so it looks more normal.

What did jump out at me is that the subjects look a little rough against the background .  Some fuzzing of the outer hair lines and softening of the other outlines and a little noise in the background would make it look more natural?

Don't have a clue what you mean with converting to CMYK etc.  Did you work on the blue channel layer?


OK, bring out the pins!

Hannie

[lurch]

Hi Athol,

Good restoration! And I'm always happy to see someone having success with my favorite approach.

Here's your feminine input, from an ex-seamstress. I think the line you're talking about is just a fold in the fabric of the woman's blouse/dress. It's too high on her body to be the inner edge of a sleeve. I'd just clone it out if I couldn't get it looking right. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the dress has a dolman sleeve - where the sleeve and the bodice are the same piece of cloth, sort of in a bat-wing shape. If that's the case, you won't see any sleeve line at all in that photo, just the fold.

For what it's worth, the woman's collar has more height and flatness than your restore; isn't so rolled.

Ask a woman a simple question and you get an essay! You'll learn!

[G3User]

Hannie, Hannie, Hannie

So untrusting for one so young. Never mind, I forgive you :hug:

I did try reducing the width of the sleeve but it has to come in a long way to look natural.

To show the method I mentioned and if you can cope with a 6mB download, check out http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=32494296. It is a .psd file of a B/W image in CYMK mode which has been colored using curves. I had been looking for a worked example since Margie/Lurch mentioned it and it makes the method easy to understand. It seems to be more flexible than working with color layers in RGB mode. The base layer can be created by any method which produces a satisfactory grayscale image.

Try it if you get a chance and let me know what you think

OK Lurch about the roughness overall, still all on separate layers so I can do the final tidy up

I think I understand how you think the dress has been made, will see if I can do something along those lines and report back. The fabric has a texture which I have been able to reproduce on her lh side of the dress and will see if I can continue it on the sleeve.

I see what you mean about the collar and will adjust it

We happily managed men have a well developed skill in coping with essays, diatribes, nagging etc. Keep up the good work ::)

Thanks

Athol

Just realized that I said managed when I meant to say married. At least that is my story

A

[Mhayes]

Athol,

You have really done a great job on this and thanks for the link with the example of doing the colorization in CMYK. I see the different layers and what their blending modes are for each one, but I am having a hard time pulling it off. I have bottom layer as a B/W, but still in the CMY mode. The example shows the next layer as a Curves Adjustment where the mask is inverted and then a white brush is used to bring back in the area that is wanted to be shown. I can remember how to switch to conceal all by hitting the Alt key when I do a regular mask, but can't seem to remember how to switch on the Curves Adjustment. It looks like the Curves Adjustment layer is used only for the purpose of using a mask? I am lost, because I see nowhere that a layer with the mode set to color is used? If the background is B/W, the curves adjustment cannot be used to tweak the color. There is one Hue Saturation Layer, but it is for the model's lips. The only others layers at the top are three overlay layers, which would be used to either darken or lightened certain areas and to control the opacity. The top layer is a merge visible.

When I followed what Katrin Eismann had for colorization I did a solid color adjustment layer and then I double clicked on the color and used the color picker to choose the color I wanted. It seems that my biggest stumbling block is trying to figure out how the colorization takes place on the curves layers. Please help an old dog learn a new trick. Woof!

Margie


P.S. I hope you haven't decided to go from the pins in the dolls to mind games as revenge?   >:D

[lurch]

Margie, you adjust the curves to get the color you want. (I think - Athol can correct me.) My technique is somewhat different in that I work on a gray-scale luminosity layer and take care of discolored spots by painting on a color layer. For wholesale colorization, I think Athol's way is probably more efficient. There's also a good Worth1000 tutorial on colorizing using the rgb primaries: http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161015

Lots of ways to skin a cat!

[Mhayes]

Lurch, I tried that, but because the bottom layer is B/W (done by channel mixer in CMYK and then flattened to have the background) it doesn't matter which of the colors I pick in Curves to adjust, I will not show color. Also what is the simplest way to reverse the mask to black and not white in Curves.

Margie

P.S. Please no skinning the cat during tutorials!  ;D

[Mhayes]

OK, I finally get the picture! I also remembered how to reverse the mask from see all to conceal which is Ctrl (Cmd I) I for inverse. The one thing I found out is that I cannot do a Channel Mixer to B/W and then flattened and then do the curves. I can do the Channel Mixer or pick a channel I like and then change to grayscale and then convert back to CMYK. Don't have a clue why it won't work the other way. Once I get the background ready, I did the Curves Adjustment, hit OK with no changes then and inverted the mask. With a brush I  then painted with white on the mask where I wanted to reveal and later color. Once that was done I used the pulled down to work each color that I wanted for each of the Curves. This is pretty cool, but looks like it is going to take some practice to use.

Margie

[Hannie]

Athol, thanks for the link to the curve coloring PDF.  I had a look at it and I'm also not too sure about the use of the curves but will try to figure it out later. 
What I find the hardest thing to do in coloring a B/W image is to pick the right color.  I have a few swatches for skin tones but I can never make them look realistic like in that PDF.
Will have to keep practising!

Hannie

[Mhayes]

Thanks Athol, now some of us will be as happy as kids with a color book!

Hannie, take the photo in the link and change to grayscale and then back to CMYK. Do a Curves Adjustment and inverse the mask--duplicate this layer for as many different layers you will want. Go back and label your layers and on each one take the brush with white as the foreground and bring back an area you want to color. Next double click on the curves icon--not the mask itself. Use the pull down menu and pick what you think would be a good color and experiment with the curve. You may also pick another color to get what you want.

What really amazed me is that I really could get some good skin tones on the model--helps when you have the perfect photo that doesn't need repairing--to match the finished one. I really think it is easier getting skin tones this way than the way I have done before. Before experimenting, I figured no way was this going to be easy, because I could not sample with a color picker to pick the right colors. On the model's dress in the link, that is a piece of cake with two colors on the Curves Adjustment.

Sorry Athol, I sort of took over your post. Thanks for a great tutorial! Lurch thanks for your link, I will check that out and try it.

Margie

[Hannie]

Thanks so much Margie, a whole new world full of color has opened up for me, I'm not kidding!

Hannie

[G3User]

Glad you found the link interesting.

The trial I did was on a B/W image converted it to CMYK. Used the magnetic lasso tool to select an area and applied a curve layer to it which then includes the mask. Do that for as many ares as  required, naming as necessary.

With the colors roughly applied adjusted brightness/contrast of the base layer, the "black" curve in curves seems to have little effect. Trimmed the masks as necessary and tweaked color.

Lurch, I had been looking for the Worth tut, thanks

I hope your reference to skinning did not apply to  BLACK CATS, round here they are regarded as family >:D

[Ausimax]

Using Curves in CMYK is a good way to colourise a B/W image, the main thing I have found is to get the B/W detail as good as you can get it, and then use Levels to make the image fairly light. One advantage I have found with this method is that I seem to have more success with facial shading using dodge & burn on the B/W image than I do using any method on a colour image.

Max

[G3User]

Max,

It also seem that overlaying very small amounts of slightly different colors on skin tones as well is necessary to get the most natural results.

I have cheated in the current project, flattened it and copied to a new file. Converted it to CMYK, selected the man's face and desaturated it. Then used the curves approach to recolor which produced a slightly better result, I think. I will leave it for a day or so before deciding which version to return

Athol

[lurch]

Athol, you might want to investigate using gradient maps for skin coloring. You can edit the gradient to insert different hues for different tonal densities. There is discussion and a few tutorial posts on RetouchPro, but I can't retrieve the links right now.