Seasons Greetings

[jaytrumpet]

I am still working on this, but am pretty disappointed with how her dress and hands came out. Would like to get rid of the blotchy areas on her dress. Your suggestions are welcome.

[Mhayes]

Hi Jay,

The first thing I notice is that her face looks squeezed in and if you will look in the green channel it gives a hint of her ear--she has a much fuller face. I also did a color correction and her dress came out a more of a blue. The dress and the splotches is going to be a slow process. You might work in the green channel and then colorize or repair and maneuver good sections down. Her hands are also going to take some work, but notice how they bend from the knuckle and where you are missing info, lasso a good part and move into place and then use a layer mask to bring in the good parts.

You've made a good start, so don't get discouraged.

Margie

[jaytrumpet]

Did a little more work on her this morning. Gave her a "fuller" face, it's very slight. Is it enough? Cleaned up her dress a bit and made it bluer. Is that more of the shade you had?

[Mhayes]

Jay, this is a little better. The dress really needs more work as if shows a lot of damage and no, that is not the color I got---take your original and do a Curves or Levels Adjustment and that should get you the color. I'm not as worried about the color as I am about the damage and places like the sleeve with clone marks?

Margie

[glennab]

Margie and Jay

I'm going to post my color-corrected version of the image with a couple of comments. Sorry it's so small, but I had a lot of trouble uploading it to Photobucket, so I made it smaller to see if it would load.

First, Jay, I think you should be able to pull out more of the folds in the lady's dress.  Her sleeves are very bunched - almost as if they're too long- so there are many folds, especially on the right.  My suggestion is that you work in very small increments with the clone and patch tool and I think her dress will look much less flat.  If you look in the green and blue channels the folds are pretty evident.

For the color correction I used Levels.  It could probably be tweaked a little more.  Margie, is this remotely like what you got?

I didn't do any repairs, because it's going to take a lot of work to bring out the detail without getting the "painted" look that you have in your work so far. I've done quite a few restorations with this type of damage, and I can tell you that there's no fast and easy way to clean up a mess like this.  You have to zoom way in and very slowly clone, heal and patch.  Any large repairs will obliterate detail that you want to keep if you possibly can. When I zoomed in on the original I could see a lot of detail in her hands that you've lost, as well.  Sometimes you can clone small areas and then go back with the patch tool and pick up texture from an area that's clean - if you can find one!

You're a brave soul for taking on this bear. Good luck.

Cheers and Happy New Year
GK

[Mhayes]

Yes Gk, that is the same colors I got. Also, the fair colors of her skin is right for her hair coloring. I didn't even attempt to do a "Quick & Dirty" on this one as there is way too much work needed.

Cheers and a Happy New Year to all of you@

Margie

[Niksmum]

This is how I see the jaw line and ear lobe





Niksmum


HAPPY NEW YEAR! :loveit:

[Mhayes]

That looks great!

Margie

[Hannie]

Niksmum, that jaw line looks good!

Hannie

[jaytrumpet]

OK, I went back to square one and tried again. Improved the right side of her face, but could not recreate her earlobe credibly. The color of her dress may still be a bit to light but it's closer.

[Hannie]

Hi Jay,

A beautiful result! 

For the ear lobe I would use this very sneaky tactic:   >:D

copy Niksmum's version, re size it so it fits your restore and paste it as a luminosity layer.  Then I would add a layer mask, fill it with black (hide all) and with a white paintbrush bring back some of that area with the ear. 
All you have to do then it smooth the edges of that area some and bring the color back to what it should be.

Hannie

[jaytrumpet]

Thanks for the cheat Hannie (and NIKSMUM)! I used it to get this version: