Easy one

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Hey everybody :-),

I just finished my latest one and thought I might share it with you so everyone can tell me whether I'm heading in the right direction or not ☺!

For this one I worked entirely in LAB mode (its easier to correct for color casts, especially when working with tricks like Jacob's Ladder :-). If you're interested I might as well do a video about it and upload it to YouTube (which I had planed anyways in German but I might as well record an English version)), cloned, healed and dodged & burned my way through :-)
Finally I used the surface blur on "Color" with a mask to get rid of some color noise that was all over the image (I guess it'll be hardly noticeable in the small web version).

Anyways, I'm pretty sure you're more interested in seeing the final piece rather than reading me describing my workflow ;-)
So here you go :-)

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After:

[Mhayes]

Hi Jonas,

This is a big improvement! What catches my eye is the greenish cast to the blinds and the wall. Given this might be the effects of Fluorescent lights. On the blinds you can still see damage and besides the green, I see a rose coloration. The border should be white and that will be an easy fix.

I would be interested to see what the "Jacob's Ladder" is. I have followed Dan Margulis and used some of his tips in his book: Photoshop Lab Color. I have also used Lab to sharpen in the Lightness channel, but with CS4 no longer do that. A good way to tweak color is to go to Lab and then in the Channels do a Curves Adjustment in both the a and b channels. Is that what you are doing?

Margie

[Jonas.Wendorf]

I'll fix that as soon as I'm back home :-)

I've read Margulis' book as well and the ladder is somehow based upon what this techniques but a little more complex.
Indeed its intended to allow color corrections on different parts of the image without having to carefully select them (its based on a channel as a "selection" and every luminance level can be treated in the individual channels).
Unfortunately it seems like its going to take a while until I can really manage to record the tutorial because my headset still didn't arrive...

Btw.: With the damage on the blinds, did you mean those two dark spots on the left? Because I think they're from the hat stand (although its hardly noticeable on the small image, its more obvious on the bigger one).

[Mhayes]

I notice the damage on the blinds more in the center and probably because of the greenish cast and then the areas where it goes lighter.  Your restore is a big improvement and this is small pic.

That is is interesting about the ladder and look forward to your tutorial when you have a chance. The only thing I am confused about is the idea of "every luminance level can be treated in the individual channels." I could see that if you were talking RGB or CMYK, but in LAB your a and b channels have the color and in the Lightness channel you have your luminonsity--so how do you luminosity in channels a and b?

Margie

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Okay, first things first, here's my updated version :-):
The green is removed  to 100% (I created a new channel, filled it with 50% gray and used "Apply Image" to apply this channel to the a-channel in "Lighten"-mode. That for sure eliminates every trace of green ☺).

The idea behind the ladder is that you take any channel you want (could be from LAB, RGB, CMYK, HSB, HSL, FFT or whatever you want to), create a new layer and fill all the three channels with the exact same version of this channel.
That'll probably result in a very awkward looking image. Now set the layer's blending mode to some contrast mode (I like to use "Linear Light") and use a curve above it that sets the luminance values of every channel to a middle gray.
Now you can treat everything that is dark in the channel you pasted in every one of the original channels :-)
Sounds a little confusing at first but its actually quite simple to do and can really save a huge amount of time.

[Mhayes]

The blinds look much better!  :up:

OK, I'm a little more up to speed--sort of  :funny: I was thinking you were doing the ladder in Lab only and could not understand with the luminosity having its own channel.

Thanks,

Margie

[Jonas.Wendorf]

I was thinking you were doing the ladder in Lab only

I am ;-) (although I can use every channel I want, I'm working in LAB only)
But hopefully it'll be clearer once I upload my tutorial on it :-)

Edit: No more criticism? That means "Upload it!" to me :-)

[Hannie]

Hi Jonas :-),

Beautiful work on your restore!  I was not really able to do much tweaking in he LAB channels, I will need to study that some more. 

I'm probably too late but I noticed that the whites are still a little grayish?  On the other hand the blinds seem a little too white?

I did a curves in the blue and green channel (RGB) to get rid of the yellow and pink cast and then I used several selective color adjustment layers to tweak the rest of the colors.  (yellow, red, white)

Please, don't apolgize about explaining your workflow and keep explaining it to us!  We always find it interesting to learn how other volunteers work and love to hear what tools they use.

Hannie

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Hi Hannie ☺,

you're right, I uploaded it after I edited my previous posting.
But I did adjust the picture a little after your suggestions and uploaded a new version of it :-)

The LAB channels are actually pretty intuitive after you played around with them a little.
First you've got the Lightness channel that contains all the details and then the a- and b-channels which contain the color.
The odd thing about those color channels is that they reach from -127 to 128 with a neutral point at 0.
Negative numbers represent the cool colors, positive numbers are warm colors (in a it's green-magenta, in b it's blue-yellow).
The great thing about LAB is that it separates the color from the luminosity completely which allows many great advantages, but that's also its biggest downside (and that's where the Ladder comes in handy, but you'll see it in my video :-)).

So I guess I'll continue explaining my workflow :-)

[glennab]

Jonas, I'm definitely interested in learning more about your technique.  Please be sure to let us know when you've posted your video.  One can never learn enough about how to deal with these tough restorations!

GK