From the last batch

[schen]

I have to admire Christine's skill of make every photo looked so easy.  I had a hard time figuring out whether it was original or damage given the complexity of the bushes in the background.  Hope your eagle eyes will help me pointing out what I missed.  Many thanks in advance.

[glennab]

Hi Chen

I see three options.  My first inclination would be to see if the photo could be cropped as close to the "crisp" area as possible,  The mom & daughter look great, as do the leaves around them.  Second would be to clean up and make sharper the leaves where the damage was, because they still look damaged.  Third would be to blur the outer area of the photo where the leaves would be very difficult to get clean no matter what you do.  A soft-edged oval around the people with a blur beyond that would look good, but it might be too close to the  dreaded V-word.  I like that idea  if you can't crop, because the emphasis will  be on the subjects of the photo.  I can't imagine that the bushes have any significance.

Good luck!

Glenna

[Mhayes]

Schen,

Nice job on the mother and child. The bushes behind looks like the fun part. Here are a few things I would do:

    1.  Tone down the white on top of the mother's hat and child's dress.
    2.   Decide the direction the sun is coming from and adjust your shadows accordingly. The shadows in the middle between the leaves and ground give good definition. Darken the shadow under the girl's dress.
    3.  On the bottom left hand side, I would leave that as grass and not clone in leaves from above.
    4.  I would stick with the texture of the bushes having leaves, rather than the texture of an evergreen such as cedar or spruce. That fine pebble look is probably water damage.
    5.  By the looks of the leaves on lower right hand side, it looks like a bright midday sun which would blow out some of the highlights on the leaves--that can stay in.      

[Hannie]

Chen, you asked for this so here comes:  If the photo is not going to be cropped I would also like to see the grass area on the left in the picture return.  I would try to clone some more healthy looking leaves.  An option might be to make your own brushes from a few good looking leaves and then you can use dynamics settings to vary the size, placement and color of the leaves. Another possibility is to steal some nice greenery, then you would have to make sure to pick the right plants and trees.  A lot of work, fine if you're not pressed for time...
If you want to stick with what you have so far, I found a few blueish/purplish spots for you in the picture below!  :)
This is a tough one, nice job!

Hannie

[schen]

Thanks for the help.  For weeks, I spent most of my effort cleaning the persons and I am going blind looking at this picture.  I am confused by what was in the original background and don't know which direction to take.  Your comments are very helpful.

I thought the lower left corner was mold similar to the upper right corner and the patch above the lady's hat.  Now, Hannie says it was grass and I started to believe it.  I have been flip-flopping between vines and scratches on those lines to the right that Hannie pointed out.  I am still not sure.

I thought about cropping it because there was too much messy irrelevant background, but the original was fuzzy and cropping will make it worse.

I need a nap and fresh eyes afterward to continue with your comments.

[Charlene5]

Schen I think what you have growing behind the figures is kudzu.  It grows everywhere in south Texas and all along the Gulf coast.  Here's what Wikipedia said about it:

Kudzu was introduced from Japan into the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where it was promoted as a forage crop and an ornamental plant. From 1935 to the early 1950s the Soil Conservation Service encouraged farmers in the southeastern United States to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion, and the Civilian Conservation Corps planted it widely for many years.

However, it would soon be discovered that the southeastern US has near-perfect conditions for kudzu to grow out of control — hot, humid summers, frequent rainfall, temperate winters with few hard freezes (kudzu cannot tolerate low freezing temperatures that bring the frost line down through its entire root system, a rare occurrence in this region), and no natural predators. As such, the once-promoted plant was named a pest weed by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1953.

[Hannie]

Chen, the "grass" is not that important, if I was you I would continue with some more cleaning and cloning and then give the background a bit of blur.  It is the people in the picture that count and they look great!

Hannie

[schen]

I took a nap (slept on it) to rest my eyes and I had to work one extra day this week.  Finally, I got time to get back to this one.

The lower left corner is planted with new grass.  I tried to clean up around the people and to the right.  I have not done much to the top 1/5 and the left 1/4.  I think some of the fuzz could be mold but I am not sure.

The light source is puzzling me.  It appeared to be a direct overhead sun from the Kudzu plants (I love to learn all these new information from the pictures) but there is almost no shadow from the woman's hat.  A large reflector must have been used.  The girl's dress looks like a flower girl at a wedding.  But the picture quality (focus and framing) is not professional.

[cmpentecost]

Hi Schen,

This is looking great, especially mother and daughter. I would certainly be OK with some cropping here.  Not too much, but a little bit, especially on the left, wouldn't be a problem.  I'm not sure what size the image is without looking, but keep that in mind for final output as well.

Good luck!

Chris

p.s.  I think it's the internet transmission of the photo that puts all of the white spots and smudges on these photos!!!  ha ha

[schen]

The photo was 2:3 ratio and the file name said 4x6.  I could crop it to 3:4 ratio.  That will cut off 1/9 on the left-hand side.  The result actually have the subjects fairly centered.  I may crop more to get a better framing of the subjects but the picture is already fuzzy and I hate to lose more resolution.

I will continue from the upper right corner toward left and decide when to stop later.

[glennab]

Chen, you bring up an issue that I think could be addressed if OPR can spare a little extra cash.  There are programs and a Photoshop plug-in called pixl-Smart, or something close to it, that use fractals to enlarge images without loss of resolution.  In a case like this where your photo will be smaller because of the crop, I'm wondering if Christine or whoever is doing the QC could acquire a copy of the software and use it to get the photo back to the original size without sacrificing quality.  What do you think, Chris?  Would that be too much more of a load or something worth checking out?  I've used pixl-Smart and it's amazing and quick. Photos can be enlarged up to, if I remember correctly, 800% and still keep their sharpness. I've used it on cover photos, and you'd never know they've been enlarged. The name of the other software is, I believe, Genuine Fractals.  I don't know if it's a plug-in or a stand-alone, and I can't vouch for its efficacy.

Food for thought.

Glenna

[Ausimax]

Actually up-sizing in PS CS2 is pretty good now and you don't have to do it in increments, use Bi-cubic Smother, in tests I've seen compared with Genuine Fractals it is only marginally less effective.

Max

[Mhayes]

Hi Chen,

I didn't realize what a small picture you had to begin with and the problem of resizing. I agree with you about the picture quality. I tried upsizing this picture with the technique that is in Scott Kelby's book the Photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers. In it he shares how photographer Vincent Versace upsizes by using Photoshop. Using that technique, I tripled the size of your photo in the Image Size pull down and then under resolution, I increased it to 360. The next thing is to change it to Bicubic Sharper. I know that the last two steps are totally against what you are supposed to do. After that I clicked okay, I went back and cropped the picture to a 4 x 3 at 300 dpi. I would like to say it was a success, but the quality was not there. I'm not sure if that was because the quality of the picture was not good to begin with and so it did work out.

Not wanting to admit defeat and knowing that it is getting late; I got this urge to do the unthinkable  >:D I know by posting this picture, I will be in management's cross hairs. On the other hand, it's late at night here and I will be signing off, so why not have some fun?

[Ausimax]

Resize and crop to 6x4 in PS CS2. 




Max

[Hannie]

Margie you are so evil!  But this photo was born to be vignetted (oh no, now I will be doomed forever...). 

Hannie