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Kevin!

Started by Hannie, November 17, 2010, 07:32:51 AM

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Hannie

Hi Kevin,

Your email in-box keeps bouncing my emails to you so I thought I would try the forum!  This was my message to you:

What an amazing restore, it looks great! 
I love how you fixed the pendant and the girl's top, the owner will be so pleased.  (if we could only see their reaction when they get this photo)

You are really careful to stay true to the original, that is good.  I think this photo has suffered some color change due to water damage though and needs a little more adjustment.
When you bring in the green and blue sliders in a levels adjustment layer you will notice that the skin tone will be more balanced and that the backdrop actually was blueish?
The yellow will also be in better balance with the C and M.  (I use the CMYK info sometimes for reference in skin tones even though I work in RGB!   Roughly speaking for Afro American skin color M is about twice as high as C and Y is the same or just a tad higher than M)

I hope this made sense....

Thanks,




Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

kevinashworth

#1
Hi Hannie

My ISP have cut my email account off because they're waiting for me to pay the bill. ( I laugh in a Cavalier manner  >:D ). No email for a while.

Yes i played around with colours after i'd finished it, but didn't get anything satisfactory. I see on your example that now the ladies have blue tinges in their faces and hair, looking at the lady in front, her left side of the forehead is practically purple, so the blue is turned up too much for my liking. The background suggests to me that it's trying to emulate a stone effect, so blue doesn't seem to fit in. In the end i left it as is, because those colours look burnished, glowing warm and african which i think suits the subject matter of the shot. But it's not down to me - it's quality control that gets the final say. But i'm happy to let it go with the colours i gave it. Yes it's a shame that us volunteers don't get to see a reaction shot, but whatever colour balance ends up in the picture, I hope they'll be happy with it. Thanks Hannie  
:loveit:

kevinashworth

Hannie i been thinking about what you said. Yes i think it does need a little more blue in there. I don't know a great deal about colour channels, but your example has added a kind of something good to the pic. How about mixing your version with the one i uploaded and maybe we can get the best of both worlds.

If you send me the best quality version of yours (PM me with a link) i could place it over the top and turn the opacity down. Just a thought.

Kev

Hannie

Oh no, no more email, what has this world come too!    :mad:

Kev, I was just about to say the same about your version and your view on what this photo should look like. 
(I did the color correction but it sure looks blue and your version does have that warm feeling to it.)

I will post the full res version here and then you can just download right from the forum.   

Perhaps the 2 version merged somehow will give a good result...

Thanks,

Hannie

Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

kevinashworth

#4
OK Hannie here's a mixture. It definitely needed some of that blue in there!

If this ones OK you can scrap the first one i uploaded and i'll send you this at full size.


GP

#5
Hi Kevin,

I hope you don't mind me butting in here.  ;D I like Hannie's blue version a little better than your latest one. I think your colors are too warm. Maybe if you would add a blue filter and play with the opacity or strength of the filter, you may get it just right.

Also, looking at the woman's arms, they look very smooth compared to the rest of their body and you can tell they had some work done to them.

Try adding some noise back by applying a noise filter or by any other means  of your choice.
Other then that your restore looks great! Good job.  :up:

Gerlinde
PS CS5, PSE9, XP, Windows 7 -64bit

kevinashworth

#6
Hi Gerlinde it's ok to butt in. This whole colour business... The thing is, I saw the other photos from the Steger gallery, and none of them seemed to have any major colour shift, so my thinking is - why should this one? Also how do we know that the photographer didn't deliberately want warm colours in his shoot? This is a professional studio shot after all. I can turn the blue up more, but i'm not entirely keen on getting purple faces and blue hair.

I'm glad you said something about the arms. Yes looking at them again they do look kinda artificial. I did add grain to them but it doesn't show up very well in these smaller, lower quality images posted here. I was tempted to add bold freckles to her arms like the lady standing, but again, we just don't know these things for certain. But i will fiddle about with them some more and i'll be more lavish with the grain. Theres something about the armpits that isn't quite right, too. I got a couple of days until the deadline to sort it out.

GP thank u very much for speaking out and giving me some feedback!

Kev

GP

You are probably right about the coloring of the picture(s), I have not seen the other ones. So if they are all in the warmer color shade it's safe to go with that.

You were saying, something is not quite right with the armpits. so that made me look at the arms again and now I noticed besides the texture of the skin, the sitting lady's left arm has too much volume and no definition were her elbow should be.

What I would try is to copy the right arm to its own layer, flip it over and use it as her left arm. You need to adjust the shading a bit, but then it should look more natural.

I'm not at my computer right now, so I can't demonstrate it, but maybe tonight. Let me know if you need help with that.

:)
PS CS5, PSE9, XP, Windows 7 -64bit

kevinashworth

Hmmm... GP Those Steger photos aren't exactly "warm", they look quite normal to me, so i treated my project as so. So colourwise, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

So the elbows - Well i'm not keen on flipping one side over to make another, because people aren't symmetrical and it usually looks obvious when one uses that approach. So i think i'll draw something specifically to suit that side of her body. It could be that the elbow of her left arm is just below the frame, thats my thinking when i did it.  :up2:

Mhayes

#9
  Hi Kev,

Unfortunately the photos aren't normal--far from it. A lot of the photos from this family are very warm in color because the photographer did not do a custom WB before shooting the photos under the lights. One clear indication is that the permission slip that the family signs is a white sheet of paper. That is the first photo we shoot and this family's permission paper has a definite orange cast---big clue that all of the photos that follow will be off. That is what happens when mixing lighting and the WB in the camera is not set to custom for the conditions before shooting. There are no other studio shots with the same background and when I do color correction in Curves I come close to blue in the background and if I do a simple Levels color correction in each channel, the background is more   lavender in color. With either of the two, I am able to get away from the orange overcast. That is why we ask volunteer to always color correct first, because what may look normal is not. Occasionally you will luck out and the color is correct for the photo, but this is not one of those times.

Most of the time we will try to get the white balance right in the camera, but flood damage will cause the coloration to change. So we go on the idea it is broke and does need fixing.

Great repair!

Margie
"carpe diem"

Margie Hayes
OPR President
[email protected]

lurch

I'm with Kevin here. The photo looks better and more natural with a warmer tone. Otherwise the skin tones go blue in the shadows, and that, to me, looks icky.
<C>

kevinashworth

Lurch Thank goodness for you   :hug:- Margie you nearly shut my mouth up there, definately and without a doubt. Now it's all clear. Thanks for coming up with the facts regarding the orange cast. That permission slip would have also been a big clue to me, had i been able to see it.

Simple levels colour corrections in curves are all very nice, but purple faces and blue hair? no way. I got rid of the orange cast on the last uploaded pic. I been in CMYK mode and had a good look around in there,  you said you came close to blue. You didn't actually achieve blue, so the argument still stands and my colour choice is correct. (with a little bit of Hannies blue!)

Mhayes

Kev,

I was talking about the background with blue and one towards lavender--not their faces.  ;D I looked at Hannie's but can't see the purple face and blue hair--must be the differences in our monitors. Since the only one that know for sure is the owner; I have left an email for her to look at the differences and decide which one she thinks is closes to the original. Below is a the release form with the info blocked out and would you say it has a nice warm tone for a paper that was white?





Margie
"carpe diem"

Margie Hayes
OPR President
[email protected]

lurch

FWIW, Kevin, the color balance I came up with, based on what I believe was the first version you uploaded and a creative version of color-by-the-numbers, was very similar to your final version. (I relied a lot on the numbers before my cataract surgery - still do.) However, your blacks were pretty much plugged up. In the future you should aim at 15, 15, 15 in RGB to retain a hint of detail. White point, if there is one, should be 245 across the board. If there isn't one (as in this photo), I move the curves slider to make the most luminous channel 245.

Margie is right about the flaky white point in this instance. Is this a good time to lobby for a 'white' sample with every download? It could be nothing more than the first ID photo. If the photographers made a proper in-camera white balance there would be no harm, and if they didn't then the volunteers, distributors, and QC would save a heap of time.


0
<C>

Mhayes

Lurch,

With the exception of the a few families at the beginning of the Nashville run, all of the current photos had a custom WB done with the Expo Disc--so I feel comfortable with them. If I think there is going to be a problem with a family's folder, I will post. I know it isn't good to have this happen, but so far you guys have done a great job in correcting.

Margie
"carpe diem"

Margie Hayes
OPR President
[email protected]