First OPR Restoration - Feedback Required

[danielmeadows]

Hi guys, this is my first post here and my first restoration for OPR.



I must admit to having never dealt with such a washed out image, there's very little information left in any of the channels here. I figured before I submitted, I could certainly benefit from a few fresh pairs of eyes.

There was little left in way of sky, is the addition of cloud acceptable?

Danny

[Mhayes]

Hi Danny, welcome to the forum! You have done a great job on your first restore. All of the photos in our galleries that have the GHF prefix are from the Galveston Historical Foundation and are very old. We want all of these to be kept as close to the original detail. Because of that, do not add in the clouds. Yes, it makes the photo look better, but it's not like the original. As old as this photo is, most likely the sky was a light gray. Change back to the original sky and try to lighten up the area around the ship in the middle. Even with a washed out sky, this is a big improvement!

Margie

[danielmeadows]

Hi Margie, thanks for your response. Is this any better? My concern is that although I've knocked out the additional cloud, there remains a lighter 'clouding' that is probably more a product of the clone stamp than the histogram, it's predominantly cloud formations of damage. I could always remove the gradiated sky and replace the noise, but I think as the cloud patterning generally follows the gradiation of the submitted original, all that would do is take the photograph further from it's probable original state.



I think we're getting there :up:

[Mhayes]

Daniel, you are in the home stretch and this looks good! The only thing I think would look better is to lighten from the water by the  tug boat up to the sky. It catches the eye to see the dark streak in the middle. A quick and easy fix would be to duplicate your background, go up to layer and pick Layer>New. In the next window, change mode to Overlay and checked the box to "Fill with Overlay=neutral color (50% gray). Pick a soft brush and make sure that your foreground is white (lighten and black to darken). I changed the opacity of the brush to 25% and brushed over the section that I thought was too dark. See what you think.

Other than that you are good to go--nice job!

Margie

[danielmeadows]

Thanks Margie, what a fantastic little trick  :up:



What do we reckon?

[Hannie]

Margie, thanks for posting that dodge/burn method again, it is such a timesaver but I keep forgetting to use it.  I used it immediately a couple of times so maybe it will stick in my old brain this time!
(one can always hope!)

Fine restore Danny!

Hannie

[Mhayes]

Danny, it looks great! It is such a neat trick, because if you go too far you can always undo and you are working on a separate layer rather than the original.

Hannie, I know the feeling that if I don't use something very often I forget the steps.

Margie

[danielmeadows]

Uploaded and accepted, thanks for the feedback guys. I'll probably dive into another this evening :up:

[Atlantis]

Once upon a time I decided to create an action for the non-destructive dodge&burn layer. It's such a timesaver! Actually I set the 50% neutral gray layer to soft light, I guess that is a matter of taste.
Oh and most of the time I set the brush to a much lower opacity, around 15, and gradually built up either the dodge or the burn. And most of the times I use one for dodging and another for burning.

[Hannie]

Atlantis, I tired both modes on this image, overlay and soft light.  Soft light was a little easier to work with, less streaky, thanks for the tip.

Hannie