My first Work in Progress

Ausimax · July 05, 2007, 10:23:23 PM

Hi Phil,

I must have missed your subsequent posts, sometimes seems to happen but we/I weren't ignoring you - boy? girl? Don't ask me, I was recently working on a teenage girl, until everybody told me it was a boy, so I can't claim to be any sort of authority on gender differentiation. :-[

Max

phischer · July 05, 2007, 10:33:39 PM

Thank you everyone for your comments...I appreciate any help I can get.
Kurt, I am amazed at the detail you were able to pull out of this. I am truly humbled. Thanks for your tips, I will try to rework it again.

PS: This is only the face! I still don't know what to do with the rest of this pic! It has been consuming my thoughts since I downloaded it. I even think I dreamt of ways to work on this image!

phischer · July 06, 2007, 01:46:45 PM

Quote from: kstruve on July 05, 2007, 07:05:13 PM
Sorry, I should have explained how I got this detail out of the photo. It's a composite of the Blue Channel and of the Yellow channel. I took the best parts of the two and combined them, then I did some dodging and burning to smooth out the blotches a little bit and to add in some shading where it didn't look quite right.

Kurt

P.S. Phil, please feel free to copy this image and paste it into your Photoshop file if you'd like.

I think I will paste this into my version. A quick question though....should I still be using the dodge and burn tools to fix the remaining damage on the face? Or is it ok to use the healing tool like I've been using on my other variations of the face?

kstruve · July 06, 2007, 01:55:05 PM

Sure, I think it's just fine to use the healing brush to repair the damage to the face. I would just be mindful of not healing over details that shouldn't be healed, like edges of eyes and nose and mouth etc. And also try to keep the overall shading intact. I would create a new layer and set your healing brush to "Sample all layers" and do your repairs on the new layer to keep the other one intact in case you mess something up. Also, make sure "Aligned" is unchecked and Alt-click on an area that has a texture you like, then as you heal over the image, it will always sample from that same area.

Kurt

phischer · July 12, 2007, 06:49:00 PM

OK...so as I was working on this for the 6th or 7th time ( ;D) I finally decided it just wasn't going to work by retouching the color version. So I had to do it in BW and next I will work on re-coloring it. I've done this before with some old BW photos, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. (Knock on wood) Here's my current state. Anybody notice anything I should fix before proceeding with color? I will most likely be re-working the face once again, because I'm not thrilled with the way this version came out, but If anyone notices anything, please let me know. I'm not entirely sure that I got her right sleeve correct. Thanks everyone.

Dave · July 12, 2007, 08:51:01 PM

You probably already realize this, but the first thing I notice is how sharp the shoes are compared to the rest of the image.

OPRAng · July 12, 2007, 10:03:33 PM

Why not hand in a B&W version AND the recolored one. Let the family decide which works better for them. The color seems to be a killer a lot of the time...

phischer · July 12, 2007, 10:42:14 PM

Quote from: OPRDave on July 12, 2007, 08:51:01 PM
You probably already realize this, but the first thing I notice is how sharp the shoes are compared to the rest of the image.

Actually I just looked at it again right before coming on here and that was the first thing I noticed. Thanks for pointing it out.

phischer · July 12, 2007, 10:44:53 PM

Quote from: OPRAng on July 12, 2007, 10:03:33 PM
Why not hand in a B&W version AND the recolored one. Let the family decide which works better for them. The color seems to be a killer a lot of the time...

I was actually going to ask if that was allowed. :) I hope I can colorize it ok, but if not I think they will be happy with this. I'm fairly confident that this is pretty close to what this child looks like. ;D

glennab · July 12, 2007, 11:05:12 PM

Hi Phil

I think you've done an amazing job on this little cutie. I do agree with Dave that the shoes are much too prominent for the rest of the photo. Maybe reduce the saturation and put a slight blur on them. Another thing that pops out at me is that her head needs to blend into the background better. The edge is a little too sharp. If you have a mask on that area, you can slightly blur the mask and that does a nice job of blending the object with the background. Or if you've cut her out of the background, try going to the layers pull-down, and all the way at the bottom there's an item called Matting, Defringe. Sometimes if you defringe by just 1 pixel you'll get a good blend. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it's a perfect solution. (These are Photoshop techniques, since that's the software with which I do my work.) And only a little furthermore... I'd even the texture on the stool just a bit more.

It's small stuff -- refinements on a restoration that I'd have been intimidated to tackle and on which you worked nigh unto a miracle.

Cheers!

Glenna

phischer · July 13, 2007, 10:00:29 AM

Quote from: glennab on July 12, 2007, 11:05:12 PM
Hi Phil

I think you've done an amazing job on this little cutie. I do agree with Dave that the shoes are much too prominent for the rest of the photo. Maybe reduce the saturation and put a slight blur on them. Another thing that pops out at me is that her head needs to blend into the background better. The edge is a little too sharp. If you have a mask on that area, you can slightly blur the mask and that does a nice job of blending the object with the background. Or if you've cut her out of the background, try going to the layers pull-down, and all the way at the bottom there's an item called Matting, Defringe. Sometimes if you defringe by just 1 pixel you'll get a good blend. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it's a perfect solution. (These are Photoshop techniques, since that's the software with which I do my work.) And only a little furthermore... I'd even the texture on the stool just a bit more.

It's small stuff -- refinements on a restoration that I'd have been intimidated to tackle and on which you worked nigh unto a miracle.

Cheers!

Glenna

Thanks for the compliments. I do agree about the head. I actually didn't really bother blending it in with the background because I do still need to smooth out the texture a little more. I worked on the head first in a separate file so I wouldn't be distracted by all of the other chaos that was going on with this pic. ;) Then when I brought the head into the cleaned up version of the rest of the photo, I realized the texture didn't quite match. I guess that's a definite drawback to working an a part of a photo in a separate file. Lesson learned. Good point about the stool texture, I think it does need to be evened out a bit. Thanks again.

phischer · July 16, 2007, 06:50:24 PM

Ok I think I am finally just about done. Anything I missed before I send this one home?

Here's the original again for reference.

Tess (Tassie D) · July 16, 2007, 07:31:21 PM

:up: You've done an amazing job with very little to go on. I notice in the original near her left shoe that the floor is grey. Maybe put a little of that color along the floor to show it up more?

kstruve · July 16, 2007, 11:26:25 PM

Her arms look a little bit off to me. Looking at the original, it looks to me as though she has long sleeves on her dress. Otherwise, looking pretty good!

Kurt

phischer · July 16, 2007, 11:47:58 PM

Quote from: kstruve on July 16, 2007, 11:26:25 PM

Her arms look a little bit off to me. Looking at the original, it looks to me as though she has long sleeves on her dress. Otherwise, looking pretty good!

Kurt

Hmmm...I'm not positive that I got the sleeves 100% correct. Especially her right sleeve. I don't think this dress had long sleeves though.