Siblings for Sure

[dle]

Luckily the heavy damage on this one was almost all on background elements. As you can see:



I took the gunk off the left side so that the backdrop shows. There may well be similar material on the right side, but if so, I haven't been able to uncover it, so rather than making something up I opted for a plain backdrop. I reconstructed the carpet using a patch of good texture extracted as a pattern using the frequency separation technique Jonas posted. (It's a pretty amazing technique.)

After the usual levels corrections, spot removal, and tonal adjustments, here's the WIP.



Suggestions?

[Mhayes]

Dave,

What a beautiful job you have done on this one. One little area you might want to tweak is on the lower part of the girl's skirt on your left. There is the one section where damage made it lighter. I like adding a layer and changing the mode to overlay (by menu at top) and checking the box for "Overlay-Neutral color (50% gray) and a soft brush with the foreground to black (to darken) and the opacity around 19%---brush over the light part to blend in better with the rest of the skirt.

Very nice!

Margie

P.S. I have never seen a boy loaded down with so many bows.

[Pat]

Dave what a wonderful photo and you've done a really nice job with it  :up2:  Thanks so much for explaining some of the techniques you used -we all can learn so much from such informative posts. 

It looks like there may be just a bit of damage remaining on the girl's arm photo left between the bottom of her sleeve and her elbow.

Pat

[dle]

Thanks, Margie and Pat for the suggestions. Both are spot (so to speak) on.

I already had a layer I was using to even out the tones in some other areas, so I used it to darken the areas of the girl's dress as you suggested, Margie. Definitely an improvement. The technique I used was a little different in detail than the one you suggested, but it's essentially the same. I used a "Soft Light" layer filled with 50% gray and set its opacity to 50%. I used a soft-edged brush with opacity set to around 10% for painting. That way each brush stroke only changes the tone a little bit and the stroke edges blend well.

While I was in the area, I added back a bit of the detail in the lace that the damage had destroyed.

Quite why I didn't see the damage on the girl's arm, I can't say. Thanks, Pat, for pointing it out. The forum is a great place to get fresh, skilled eyes to look at a photo you're working on. It's surprising how, after looking at a photo for a long time, I can just not see things that are clearly there.

Here's the next version:

[Pat]

It's surprising how, after looking at a photo for a long time, I can just not see things that are clearly there.

I always found that surprising too Dave.  Now I just chalk it up to occupational hazard and know I can rely on the fresh eyes that can always be found on the forum.

Very nice job!

Pat

[Mhayes]

Dave, great job!

[Candice]

AWESOME!!  :wnw:

[dle]

Thanks, everyone, for the nice words and for helping me get better at doing restorations.

Back it goes to people who care about it even more than we do -- the owners.

[Bambi]

Beautiful restoration, Dave.

Bambi