Desperately need feedback

[GP]

Hi Glenna,
nice job cleaning up the mess on this one. I'm not sure if we ever will know how the lady on the left, and the little girl she is holding, really look like.
I think Mary did a great job reconstructing her. She takes the same approach I take in a desperate situation as this. I look closely at all the faces and search for family resemblance. In this case I think the woman next to her is probably her sister or even her daughter.
I made a selection around the left part of the woman in the middle's face (our right), put it on it's own layer, and flipped it over, transformed the perspective. Lower the opacity of the layer until  it matches what is left over of the woman on the left's face. I lightened up the dark streak on the little girls face using the dodge tool and brightened her right eye a bit. It still needs more work, this  is a quick and dirty.
                         
                       

Before I started on replacing the faces, I did a couple of overall corrections to get more detail:

                           

I hope this will help.  :hug:

[mitzs]

Wow GP, I thought mary was great. I think yours matches up better with the one side of the face you can sorta see! Someday...

[glennab]

Hannie, right now I'm loving the word "vignette!"  What's making me crazy is that I can see in my mind's eye the face of the woman on the left.  She's very pretty with a rather squarish face.  But every time I start to work on her, when I try to even out the flaws, I lose her.  If I were to do the vignette, I'd want her in the visible area.  I mainly want to cover the blank area at the bottom.

Gerlinde, thanks for jumping in.  I think that, going by what you've all said, the first thing I need to do is a few more channel and layer experiments.  First thing I'm going to do is watch my new DVD on Photoshop CS3 Layer Essentials.  I have CS2, but many of the techniques should be comparable.

Mitzs, a hopper is a container in which one places items of importance to deal with at a later time.  It comes from (and this is verbatim from my dictionary) a box in which bills are put for consideration by a legislature.  Or that's the definition in my mind when I use the word.  I have several "hoppers" in my office: basically baskets or file bins where I stash good articles from Photoshop User, anything about cats, catalogs (from which I'll probably never order anything), reference material and other treasures which need to eventually be used and then filed in a proper place or recycled.

I have an OPR hopper in my brain in which I file all the gems you gurus send my way, or suggest to other members, so that if/when I run into a comparable issue I can have a good place from which to start.  Problem is, my hard drive is getting full after all these years, and I haven't figured out how to ingest Cocktail or Norton to defrag and organize the gazillion bits of information I've gathered.  I read constantly and I'm interested in just about everything, so imagine how many gigs of data I'm carrying around...

I was listening to A Way With Words a couple of days ago, and the commentators were talking about trying to use keyboard shortcuts in real life.  As in Command-Z when one has committed a major faux pas, or Escape ( from work or an awkward situation).  They were trying to invent a name for that attempt to create such a magic item.  I got distracted and don't remember if they ever did coin a word, but will have to go back and check it out.

Oh, heavens, the GK has surfaced.  So sorry, Max.  I'm going to head back underwater for a while!

Hugs and thanks!

(Margie, you were SO DARN CUTE!)

GK

[mschonher]

Hi GP that looks great.  I didn't even bother to do any corrections just used the darkest version on the forum. 

Glenna thanks for the definition of hopper, I always associate that word with farm equipment  :D.  Seems like you have enough suggestions to get you through this difficult restore.  Good luck.

Mary    :hug:

[glennab]

Mary, you're right.  Another definition of hopper is a tapered container through which grain or other materials are moved to a different location.

And you're right, I have a wealth of information with which to proceed, and I shall do just that later today.

GK

[glennab]

I've about worn out my brain trying to make this work.  I finally got to a point that I think this may be viable.  All of a sudden mom's face appeared out of the debris.  I know I've done a VERY unconventional treatment of the vignette, but I didn't want to cut off mom's head.  The only way I could accept the look of this one was to leave a lot of the texture.  Without it everything looks flat and REALLY awful as opposed to just marginally awful, as it is now.  Any comments would be much appreciated.

GK

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Glenna I think you've done an amazing job on these ghosts. :up:  You're right about leaving the grain, it adds to the age of the photo and keeps it realistic.

[mitzs]

Glenna, if you are not happy with your vignette, add more canvas and then do the vignette. And did you try the clone brush and the other picture we found of the little girl? Something about her doesn't look right. I think you have done a great job on this picture considering what you had to work with. There is no way I could have even begun to rescue that picture. This calls for another all hail Glenna! :wnw:

[Mhayes]

GK, you must really like pain when you picked this one. I'm kind of getting into this a little late, but here is my 2 cent worth. On this one to make the vignette work and not draw attention to the woman holding the child; I would make the radius fairly high, that way you don't have such a sharp definition and it would soften the edges outward. There is so much missing at the bottom that I think you are doing great to get as much done as you have. The little girl in front and her dress looks well defined, but then the panels on either side, I would like to see a little lighter so that it doesn't make her look so plump on the bottom.

Margie

[Hannie]

Great job Glenna, I think you've got the little girl spot on!  :up2:

Hannie

[glennab]

Thanks for all the input, my friends.  I didn't use either of the template photos for the family as the little girl's face was shaped very differently from the other photos.  I know she still doesn't look quite right, but I didn't want to make her into a person I don't think she is, so I "followed the dots" and this is all I could pull up. The other woman appears to be an older version of the one on the right, rather than mom.  Margie, I agree about the vignette.  Just wasn't sure where to go with it, because there isn't much photo at the left, so I wonder if I can downsize the image a bit, enlarge the canvas as mitzs suggested and then it can be softened and still have solid white at the edges (or is that necessarily desirable?).  I'm so used to doing unconventional work at my job, that I had to give this one a lot of contemplation, because the vignette about put me over the edge (is that a pun?).  (Not a far jump right now!)

I assumed that what little I saw of the fabric surrounding the little girl's skirt was her sister's skirt (the one directly behind her).  Would it be better to work on more definition or try to blend them a bit more?

I appreciate all the time you've taken to look at this one.  Have you heard this before... ???? I didn't think it would be so difficult until I looked at it on my screen!  Ghosts are my specialty, but this one challenged my skills WAY above and beyond!  I'll check tonight, reflect on your suggestions and any one else's who may want to jump in and then send them home – or to someone who can polish it up a bit.

Love you!

GK

BTW, a side note:  I went back to A Way With Words to see if I could find the term for wanting to use keyboard shortcuts in real life.  An example one of  the hosts gave was using the search key to find things in her office.  The word (which I love) is E-Flex.  Now if I could only find Lon's FWW key... (fix whatever's wrong).

[klassylady25]

Boy oh boy, has this one come a long long way!! 

Way to go!!!!

[Mhayes]

GK, nothing like being a backseat driver when it comes to giving you advice, but No, I would not enlarge the canvas and have solid white as the background as that is putting the emphasis on having a pretty background instead of the people. Also, I'm not sure what the size of your photo is and if it is small that would not be good to downsize it.  My suggestion would be to go back to your original, which I'm hoping still matches up with your WIP and do a very soft vignette there.

Take your original and use the Elliptical Marquee and do a selection and then Inverse>go down to Adjustment Layer and pick Solid Color (white or off white)>reduce the opacity (see if 30% to 40% looks good)>go up to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. With the Gaussian Blur take the slider all the way to the right until you have softened the edges. When done, flattened and drop in as a layer on top of your WIP and do a layer mask that conceals all. Click on the layer mask and pick white and a very soft brush and paint back the soft vignette you created below.

As to bringing more definition to the girl's dress; I think you have done a good job on that. I think it needs to somehow be a different shade to make it look like it isn't part of the little girl's dress.

You are doing great and this is just a suggestion.

Margie

[glennab]

Margie, layers are our friends!  I always keep a series of WIPs - one for each day I work on the restorations so I can go back if I have to.  I'll create the vignette as you suggested (I think this is a small photo).  I have a question for you.  When I make a vignette, I usually feather the edges rather than using guassian blur.  Since that's not an effect I've used here, do you think there's an advantage to one over the other?

Once I get home,  I'll check for any more comments and hope I've done well enough that someone else doesn't have to battle with it. I'll do what polishing I can and send them on their way.

Thanks and Hugs!

GK

[mitzs]

Glenna I saw a corey barker video or was it matt K? Anyway where he enlarge the canvas and then use the liquidfie tool and pushed the sky and the side out on the  new canvas with that was in the orginal picture. You could try that and see how it works. Also stop beating yourself up. That was a really bad photo you had to work with even if they don't look exact atleast you were able to perserve them and hopefully the family knows who they are so they can pass their names down the line. I hate looking though old photos and no one knows who they are. Your doing a great job! :up: :hug: