Feedback for my first "Difficult" Restore

[barbkev]

I'd say I'm maybe halfway done with this. Can I get some feedback on how it looks so far?

I'm not sure how to tackle the top of the photo, especially what looks like a framed picture/painting behind the couch and the woman's hair. Any suggestions?

Also, I'm not much of a painter so I did a LOT of cloning for the woman's dress. I am planning on fixing the color cast later; other than that (and forgetting the shadow under her left arm), how does it look? Any tips for getting it more realistic and/or is that important?

Original:


So Far...:

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Thats looking really great so far Kevin. :up:  The top of the picture is fairly well damaged so I'd just finish off the top of the couch as best you can and add a bit of blur to the frame and damage above it.
The lady's hair looks to be permed? You could try cloning bits that aren't damaged and using the smudge brush to blend it all in.

[Mhayes]

Kevin, you really picked a hard one and on top of that you pick one that has a small checked pattern. I agree with Tassie D on the top of the couch. On the woman's hair, on your right is about all the good information that you have. Clean it up and remove the red spots and then become a hairdresser.   :) You could try cloning, but what I like to do is go up and use the regular lasso tool. Take it and do a selection and then hit Ctrl J (Cmd J) to duplicate what you have just done. Now hit the your V key, which will let you move your selection. I use the arrow keys to position my selection and you will see the square boxes on the corner of your selection. If you take your mouse or pen close to the corner, your will see a two-ended arrow, which means that you can rotate your selection. Once you have it in place, hit enter. If you like it you can hit Ctrl E, which will merge that layer to the one below. Make sure that you have a duplicate of background copy. You can also do the same thing on the woman's sleeve only this time use the Polygonal Lasso, which will give you nice straight edges.

You have done a great job on the baby and getting slippers restored. Also, nice job on grandma's hand, is that a copy of her other one? Right now the photo you are working on is a little too much to the orange red side. You may want to tone that down. You are headed in the right direction and post your progress.

Margie

[mschonher]

Great job on your first difficult photo Kevin.  Hannie and Margie have given you great advice, the only thing I can add is to put a shadow under the arm/sleeve that is holding baby's hand. Also I would lower the contrast.  Good luck...........Mary

[barbkev]

Thanks for the feedback. Blurring the wall/painting was pretty much what I was planning. I'll post my update when I have it.

One other question... what would you all suggest for the baby's right hand? I can't pick out any information on what he's doing with his right hand and his left hand is obscured by the woman's hand.

[Hannie]

Hi Kevin,

What a great job you did on this one, you are bringing it right back to life!
I looked in the different channels but there isn't enough detail of the baby's hand left to work with.
One suggestion could be that you extend the sleeve a little to the side so it looks like the hand is not quite in the picture?

Hannie

[barbkev]

Good suggestion, Hannie. I think I'll give that a try. Since the one arm is out, it would make sense that maybe the child would have the second out as well. (there was no information on the right arm as it was, so really, anything done is guesswork.

[hoodman3]

Kevin,

Another way to get the check pattern aligned is to use the patch tool (under the healing brush in PS 8 & later). Draw a rough selection around an area you want>while holding down Ctrl & Alt keys move the selection to the intended location>while still holding down the Ctrl & Alt keys hit "T" and you can free transform. If you need to move again you can use the eraser tool to clean up left over image parts. Also you could use the warp tool and wrap the pattern as needed. Do all of this on a separate layer so you can go back if needed. Sorry, this is for PC's, I don't know Mac's.
Katrin Eismann talks about this procedure in her book " Restoration & Retouching" 3rd Edition and she credits Russell Brown for the tip. Here's his web site.  http://www.russellbrown.com/

Best of Luck,
Pete

[Hannie]

Great tip Pete!

[schen]

Pete,  Thanks for the tip.  That is what I always wanted to know (how to do transform on the patch selection) but afraid to ask. 

[barbkev]

OK - I think I'm pretty much done... what do y'all think?



Its up to 30 layers in Photoshop currently! (I'm kinda nuts about non-destructive editing)

Pete, I was trying to figure out that tip but was not completely following. I'll look on Dr. Brown's site to see if he mentions it somewhere.

[Hannie]

Beautiful job Kevin!

Hannie