question / feedback needed

[marifer]

Hi,

I am new in the group and this is the first image that I worked on. Any feedback would be appreciated. I do have a question, I was reading that we are not supposed to manipulate the image’s color, but I notice that some people do it. For example in this image probably the dress is not yellow/green. What should I do?

Thanks,
Fer

Also...what is the tag to post images?

http://www.millaresdesign.com/attic/OPR/BrouV_20_17_3x4.JPG
http://www.millaresdesign.com/attic/OPR/BrouV_20_17_3x4_DONE.jpg

[kstruve]

Fer,
This is an old color photo that has yellowed from age.  In my opinion, it's okay to adjust the color balance to correct some of that.  Just be careful not to go too far and turn it blue - I've seen that happen, and it looks worse than leaving it yellow.  Especially when the subject is people, I would err on the side of a warmer color balance than a cooler one.

Welcome to OPR!
Kurt

[rockthumper]

Welcome to OPR Fer.
Top job on the repairs to that image. :up2:
The image tags are "img" and "/img" in square brackets. The second button from the left (below italics) will wrap them round your link if you highlight it when you are posting.
Colour is sometimes a problem and there are people a lot more expert than me who can comment but I don't see anything wrong with trying to get the colours correct so white is white. Some of the recent posts here have spent a lot of time trying to get colour cast out of images, personally I think the final results are well worth the effort. However I've read the images will be colour corrected before printing anyway so it could well be unnecessary work from that point of view.
Some comments about your images:
An 800x600 reduced image is a lot easier to look over in a post and all you need imo if you're discussing the colour. 800KB images take a significant time to download for some people, including me.
Did you miss some damage above the woman's head? There something odd up there.
The man's hands and face look rather flat - I think from where you've corrected blown out highlights or cloned over damage. There are several ways to do that and I'm still learning these techniques but here's one way that works for me:

Fixing Shiny Skin
by Stevekin from PSE group on Flickr

Click on 'Create new Layer' icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
Change the blend mode of this new blank layer to Darken.
Now take a suitable sized paintbrush, set the opacity of the brush to between 10 and 15 percent, press and hold the Alt key to change the brush to the colour picker and sample a colour close to the shiny bits that you want to use to brush over those shiny bits.
Now paint the highlights away, building up the strokes as necessary.

If you find the low opacity too subtle, just increase it to between 25 and 30%

Setting the blend mode to Darken, means that only pixels that are lighter than the sampled colour will be affected, it will darken them.

Hope that helps. :)
RT

[Hannie]

Hi Ref,

Welcome to the board, you have done an amazing job restoring this photo!
I agree with Kurt on the color issue, when I tried to balance the color on this photo it turns a bit blue and cold.
I also  agree with RT on the man's right hand, a little shadowing should fix that.
Tried adding a little noise to the men's suit and upped the contrast just a tiny bit.
Love how you managed to restore this photo without giving it that painted look!

Hannie

[kiska]

Welcome Ref!

I did a curves adjustment layer.

white point = 95% on boy's collar

black point = 6% on boy's right shoe

gray point where the arrow is

http://upload.pbase.com/image/86565619

[marifer]

thanks everyone, I fixed the face and hand a little bit, that technique is nice! I also added more noise to the suit.
That thing on top of the woman head is a black bird...

[rockthumper]

A bit of curves and/or gamma adjustment to bring them out of the murk and that should look great!  :up:

I *cough* had a quick play with the colour too:


Edit: I came back and realised what I posted was fairly badly done. I've changed it now, desaturating the guys suit by about 50% and adding more noise to it. I also multiplied his face a touch and increased the contrast there. I think that allows the picture to have a warmer hue without the suit exploding out of it. I burnt in the background (very roughly) where it looked cloudy too.
RT.