Please Eyeball the Bride

[Charlene5]

I'm almost ready to call her finished but won't until y'all give her the eye.  I never could figure out if the flowers in the vase behind her were all yellow or yellow and white.  If you can figure it out please let me know.  This one was a pleasure.  The bride had a face and it was all correcting running colors and reupholstering the damage.

MJ in Texas who is still waiting for fall to begin.

[glennab]

Hi MJ who's waiting for fall (we've finally been able to turn off our air conditioners – perfect Fla fall weather – the reason we're overwhelmed with visitors this time of year!  Wall-to-wall tourists from all over the world.  Since I work on tourist publications, that's a good thing!)

Your bride looks gorgeous.  Based on my color correcting, it appears that all the flowers in the vase that look like mums have either yellow in the center or are light yellow.  The other flowers, whatever they are, appear to be off-white.  However, that's so nit-picky that I doubt anyone would notice a slight divergence between the original and your restoration.

Nice work, wild woman!

Cheers

Glenna

[Mhayes]

MJ, you did a great job on the cleanup, especially those two huge reflections. There are two things that bother me. The first is that the picture is not straight (look at the bricks behind her), which is no fault of yours but it still catches the eye. The second one is that I don't think the church is that brightly lit. You can see the shadows behind her, which comes from a flash on the camera going off. I do think that the bride needs to be lighter, but I think the background should not be as light. I've done a quick and dirty, but that doesn't mean my version is the correct one.

Margie

[Mhayes]

Good Grief! The colors on mine look very sick, so ignore the advice.  :-X Okay, maybe one small idea. I think that if the background was left almost as dark as it is in the original it would look better than being so light and bright. I promise I will go sit in the corner and let someone else who makes more sense reply.

[Ausimax]

MJ thats a beautiful restoration.  :wnw:

I agree that the church looks bright Margie, but if you look at the original and your version there is no major fall-off of light in the top corners, I just think the photographer used some powerful lighting ( like to get a look at the flash unit).
There's the photographer coming out in you, claiming the church wall isn't straight, I have untold arguments with my DW over things like that, and she gets miffed when I tell her I am to restore the photo, not retake it!

Though most of those are snapshots, I don't know the excuse for this one, as I would assume it was done by a Pro.


Max

[schen]

Your bride has lovely bright colors and the same time the rich layers of brightness of the wedding dress, flowers, Greek column and the Grecian Urn were washed out and seemed flat.

The flash shadow on the near objects like the wooden bench would not have blurred margin.

I would try to clone the original carpet texture back.

Enough picking for such a nice job.  Sorry.   :hug:

We had the first flurry of snow this evening and the fall is leaving for the winter already.  The Ash in the front has about 10 leaves left,  the linden and maple in the back did not drop a leaf yet.  It is a strange year.

[Tess (Tassie D)]

That is a beautiful pic. :up: I agree with the carpet, theres enough of it there to sample and having the background darker will give it some depth.
Brings back memories of when I was that young and slender.  :-\

[Mhayes]

MJ, I'm only out of my corner for a small time out. Max, I should never have done this so quickly and also by using the Shadow/Highlight I blew too much of the shadows out. That is probably why you don't see any fall off light. Schen, I love what you have done. Well back to my corner and a promise that I will try not to butcher another's photo.

[Hannie]

Hi MJ,

I will take over from Margie here, I'm also very good at butchering other peoples photos!  ;)
Your restoration looks amazing!  I agree with some of the remarks that have been made by my fellow butchers.
I used your restored photo and did some levels adjustment, color adjustment and saturation adjustment to make the colors look more like the original.  Then I raised the highlights a little to make the dress stand out.
Just ignore what I said, your estoration looks great!

Hannie

[klassylady25]

Now how 'bout just a bit of rotation to make it not look as though it's leaning to the left.  But then again it might be, one never knows!  lol

It's lovely!!  :up:

[Charlene5]

Got up this morning, read your comments, and went back to squinting at the screen for a bit.  I darkened and cranked up the saturation on the background, darkened and backed off the saturation on the foreground carpet, and lightened the bride a little.  Y'all must have better eyes than I do - the only patch of undamaged carpet I could find was a little bit in front of the chair - but then again maybe this church had multi-toned shag carpet as it was in the foreground? :)  I fretted over the brick behind the altar and even got Himself to look at it.  He's male and all males are allegedly born with that gene that makes them an instant expert on all things tools and construction (even if he is a network engineer).  He thought it had a curve to it which makes sense as there are other curves in the architecture.  I couldn't tell with all the flash back there so I put it back as I saw it.  Max I think the photographer used one of those turn of the century flash trays filled with gunpowder and blinded the poor bride for a full 15 minutes :)

May I send her home now?

[Hannie]

Turned it 1 deg. CCW, looks a little straighter but you also lose a bit of the image.
If I were you I'd send her home, she looks beautiful!

[Charlene5]

I relooked at the original and there is a tiny patch on the bottom left that reveals outside the corner of the picture.  Maybe it was photographed at a slight angle?  It does look better with your 1 degree added, Hannie.

[klassylady25]

I agree with the tilt.  Much better.  :o)

[Ratz]

Beautiful job, send her home!!