Please Help Me Decide

[Charlene5]

These are my footless people.  I have enough information in the mess to give him a nice pair of black bland male laceups and she appears to be wearing low heeled black pumps.  My problem is the little girl.  I don't know what's going on down there.  I think I could safely assume she's wearing some kind of white shoe but what kind?  Socks?  No socks? 

As I see it there are three choices:

1.  Crop
2.  Take a guess at her shoes and maybe socks
3.  Give the parents shoes and have her legs end in stumps :)

Please let me know your thoughts. 

[glennab]

Hi Ms 5!

I think a judicious crop would be the best way to go.  You could stop just below the dresses so a bit of the legs show.  I'd prefer that to the little girl having stumps and guesswork at mom & dad's shoes.  If you make the photo proportionate by cropping a bit off the rest, I think you'll still have a fine composition. In fact, I believe you could crop further up and the family would still look good.

I'm assuming you're still working on Mom's hand.  Nice work!

Glenna

[Tess (Tassie D)]

I think a crop too. If not you could put a hint of white slip-ons there for the girl, no socks.

[Charlene5]

Glenna!

Yes I'm still working on the picture :).  I'd just reconstructed most of the dad's suit where I'd jumped from working on skin.  I just left that poor hand dangling there half done.  I'm not one of those people like you see in magazine articles or training videos for Photoshop.  They have nice tidy organized layers, all labeled, arranged in groups and color coded or alphabetized or something.  They work in a steady progression from their written plan.  I jump around from mess to mess and get distracted and have dozens of unlabeled layers and then get monumentally confused.  I've tried to do it the "right" way but it stifles my creativity <cough>

Thanks for the opinion Tassie!  I'm leaning toward cropping but I'll wait and see if there an other voices checking in.

MJ

[rockthumper]

Nice job.  :up2:
I vote for the crop too.  Even if you put the feet in I think the girl's would be cut short, so it's not worth the effort.
Also need to fix up the girl's legs as one looks twice the width of the other.
Any chance of winding the guy's suit back to the original colour? Just a personal preference...  >:D

[Charlene5]

I may have to thump you with one of your own rocks, Rock Thumper :)  I am still working on it.  I'd reached the point of finishing mostl of the reconstruction except for the problematic feet.  No dodging, no burning, no colour corrections, and the poor woman's hand still looks half diseased.  I assure you that all will be put right when I send them home. 

And you do know that I'm kidding?  Sometimes it's hard to express that without body language.  I shall now haul myself off to bed and dream of footless people.

MJ

PS:  The little girl's leg is superimposed over her mom's, so what you're seeing is part her and part behind her without the burning put back.

[GP]

Hi Charlene,  :cool:
here are my 2 cents to your dilemma:

the girl's leg ( her left) looks to be 2x the size because we are actually looking at mom's and the girl's leg at once. Some shading might help here to separate the 2 legs. As for the feet you have my blessing to take the easy way out and crop them off   ::) or....
you can do your best to create some new feet for mom and dad ( as you already have started).I believe the girl's feet would not be fully visible, judging by the proportion of her legs to the rest of her body. Unless she has very short legs of course. I'm pretty sure you could only see her feet from the instep upward. You could leave the decision of cropping the photo to the owners if they don't like the way things turn out in the end.  ::)
Besides, you have done a nice job so far getting things back as they were. Good luck for the rest of the way!
Gerlinde

P.S: I just noticed you explained the situation with the 2 legs already!   :-[

[rockthumper]

No offence meant MJ  ;) I knew you hadn't finished but sometimes things get overlooked so I thought I'd better mention the legs to make sure they're on your list. I suspected there was a bit of the heel of the woman's shoe there but it didn't seem the right place to me. I'm sure it will look excellent when you've sorted it out.  :)

[Hannie]

Hi MJ,

You have done an incredible job cleaning up, you brought out more detail as well!   :up2:
I would vote for no cropping and just continue with what you are doing.  (It isn't that cropping wouldn't improve the photo but I noticed several times that the people that deal with the QC and printing prefer it that way, to maintain the integrity of the photo.  I think they use the expression "we restore memories not return perfect images"?)
I do have one question, you said that you work in layers, that is great, is it possible at all to give the man back his old suit?  His new suit that you made him is much neater, but it isn't the same... 

Hannie

[Hannie]

MJ, that is amazing!  How did you do that!  There must be thousends of bronze statues all over the place and you managed to pick the right one... :wnw:

Hannie

Edit: somehow this message ended up in the wrong topic!