Anyone have night vision?

[glennab]

Hi volunteers

I'm posting my current bear in hopes of getting some feedback to help me finish before the year's out.  Here are some questions:

Can anyone tell what the little object is that's hanging on the woman's dress?  At first I thought it was damage, but the shadow on the dress and the fact that there's a piece of a similar object at the bottom of the photo gives me pause.

Should I try to get dimension in the black suits of the gentlemen on the right as we look at the photo, and if so, do you have any suggestions as to how to manifest said dimension when everything else is black as well?

I've redone the face of the woman in the background 3 times, and I can't get anything that looks plausible.  In the original she appears to have rather coarse features and a very, voluptuous mouth.  But I'm having fits trying to decide how much of the shape and shading is damage.

The man facing us with the tie has no definable visage.  How would you handle that?

Between that man and the woman is a strange shape that I can't identify.  Anyone?

This was a cake walk with the main subjects and the left side, but the right side crowd is making me crazy.  I'd appreciate any suggestions, observations, critique, whatever you can contribute to my VERY FRUSTRATED efforts.

Thanks!

Glenna

Addendum:  What can I do with the woman's shoe.  Right now I think it looks abyssmal.

ORIGINAL:


PROGRESS TO DATE:

[mschonher]

Hi Glenna, you are doing an amazing job on this one especially with those yellow scratches. There are probably as many ideas about this photo as there are members. That being said, I thought that thing near her arm might be a purse but when I took a real close look that couldn't possibly be. I think it's just damage. I'd like to see the background darker as in the original with less detail which I think is distracting from the two main subjects. I think it's amazing that you pulled that much detail from the background and I don't want to dismiss all that hard work you did but since it seems to have been snapped at night the background should be dark. I also think the light area to our left, behind the lady in the gold dress is damage because of it's odd shape.  I'll send an idea for the background ladies feet and shoes. I forgot to save a copy I could draw on.
It's funny how we all become obsessed with the little areas of a photo we work on. Perhaps it's because we stare at them for so long and so enlarged on our monitors.

PS I posted 2 pics of our Cherry trees for you to look at.

[Hannie]

Great job you've done getting rid of the spaghetti!  Please don't be frustrated Glenna, it is a beautiful restoration!
I second Mary, I also think that the thingy on the dress is damage.  If you enlarge that area you can see that the yellow stripes are partly covered by our thingy, indicating (later) damage, probably mold?
The lady's face looks really good, no changes needed I'd say.
What Mary said about the background makes sense to me as well, I don't think it needs too much focus there?

Now the Easter egg between the dress and the man might be the backside of a voluptuous person bending over to pick up the penny he/she just dropped.

In the magnified version I could see that the shoe is a black (highheeled) pump.  Part of the shoe showed up white because the lady wearing polished the heck out of'm. (or they could be patent leather).

:loveit:

Hannie

[Pelican]

Dittos everyone one the excellent job! This is looking great! I agree that the thing on the front of her dress is damage. The folds in her dress pass uninterrupted right behind it as if it weren't there.

I think the lady's face looks great. I would loose the faceless fellow into the background, he's not that important to the picture. I agree also that the shape in the shadows is a blond woman, but I wouldn't bother with her either.

I would fade the woman's foot into the shadows. I might even go so far as to move the date over the top of it a little more.

Curtis

[mschonher]

Glenna, this is a down and dirty rendition for you. I darkened the background by duping the image and changing the blending mode to multiply, then applied a layer mask hide all and brushed over the areas that needed darkening. I'm sure you know how to do this already, you're way more technically advanced than me. I drew the ladies shoes as flats...uh oh! I didn't see the heels. I really don't think it matters anyway.
After I did those things the hair of the 2 main subjects had a purplish cast to it so I selected them and made a copy, then I went to color balance and added yellow until I thought it looked better. Yellow is the opposite of purple so it neutralized it. I flattened the whole image then made a new layer and added some detail to the hair, gave it a small Gaussian blur. I did the hair so fast it is very sloppy.

I agree with everyone that the faces look great and that is the most important part of the photo. You're doing a great job on this one. I hope this helps.

Mary

[Tess (Tassie D)]

What a great job Glenna. :up: I agree that the mystery thing on the dress is damage. It almost looks like a piece of debris.
The womans face in the background is great and I agree about fading her shoes a bit.

[klassylady25]

What a toughy. It's been fun to watch this one grow and change.  Glenna, are there any light reflections in the eyes of the two?  Picture is a bit small to tell.

C

[Johnboy]

Glenna,

It is looking good. I looked at this one, and in fact played with it a little. Then decided to let someone else work on it. I am glad I did. You are doing a great job as usual. Now I understand your comments about yellow scratches in other threads.


Johnboy

[glennab]

All...

Thanks so much for the wonderful feedback.  Mary, you're right.  It's so easy to miss little things when working closely and intensely on a restoration. (Not to mention the frustration of 3 hours of work lost when the power went out several times and the *!@#!! UPS didn't work. Save, stoopid, save!)

Duping and multiplying the background is a perfect means by which to darken and fade everything and everyone into the background except our two lovely ladies.  When I get home from work tom'w, I'm going to try to finish.  Today was get-home-from-work-and-go-out-and-dig-weeds-until-dark day.  Too pooped to restore tonight.

Again, I so appreciate all your help and encouragement. I'll post the finished restoration before I send it home.  You're the best, my friends!

Cheers!

Glenna

[Ausimax]

Glenna, Re: the power failures and the UPS not working, Make sure you have the UPS software installed properly, last time I had computer trouble I forgot to reinstall the software and the power went off. The UPS worked OK, kept the computer running for 30 min till the battery went flat, didn't switch it off because the monitoring software was not working.

Just a thought.


Max

[glennab]

Hi Max

Thanks for the heads-up.  Lon mentioned software, too, and I've had the UPS so long I don't remember any, but I suspect it's in my pile of discs.  Didn't occur to me to install it into the new computer when I got it.  I'm going to rummage through the cat fur and see if I can scare it up.  Gotta do it soon, as we're at the edge of our really bad storm season, and since we're the lightning capital of the world, our poor electronics are always at risk.

Cheers!

Glenna

[mschonher]

Okay guys, what is UPS? Yesterday I lost 3 hours of work but it was due to my own stupidity when I deleted it by mistake. After that I was so disgusted with myself I just called it a day. We have lots of power outages where I live too and especially in the spring. Glenna I had no idea that Florida is the lightening capital of the world, or are you being your usual funny self? I never knew a storm could be so dramatic until we moved from the west coast to the east! The only place I ever saw such lightening and heard such thunder was at the movie theater.  I can't wait to see your finished photo. 

Mary

[schen]

Happy birthday, Mary.

UPS stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply.  It is an electronic device sitting between the power outlet and the computer.  The purpose of UPS is to provide line power to the computer regardless of the condition of the power from the outlet.  A minimum UPS contains a battery, a battery charger and a power inverter.  The battery charger keeps the battery charged all the time.  When you lose power from the outlet, the power inverter kicks in and converts the charge in the battery to line power for the computer.

The battery has limited amount of storage for electrical charge.  When power is lost, the computer should be gracefully shutdown before the charge in the battery is depleted.  UPS often has signal connection to tell the computer that its power inverter is running and when its battery is running low.  The computer software shall save as much data as possible and shut itself down before the battery runs out of charge.

The computer software does not always do what you want it to do.  So even with UPS, one shall always save, save and save.  I usually do a save every minute or two and make a backup copy every day on the files I am restoring.

[glennab]

Amen, Shujen.  Save is the key word.  I sometimes just get so engrossed in what I'm doing that I forget - and usually REGRET!  I know the UPS should at least keep the computer on long enough to save and shut down, so mine is somehow awry!

Mary, Central Florida really is known as the lightning capital of the world.  Sometimes the storms are terrifying.  I remember getting caught in a few when I was sailing, and it scared the crap out of me.  One of my associates at work was struck when lightning bounced off a store front, to a light pole and then right beside her in a parking lot.  Fortunately by that time the charge was low enough that it just stunned her.

We get a lot of close hits, and the sound of the lightning strike is unbelievable.  You've never seen an old woman move so quickly as I do when there's an electrical storm nearby and I'm outside.  The house was hit once and we lost our TV and computer modem.  I had the computer unplugged, but forgot to disconnect the phone line.  People have been zapped through the phone lines, when taking showers or washing dishes.  I have to say, though, that I've seen some incredibly stunning (pun intended) photos of lightning hitting ground in this area.  Maybe I can shoot some with my new camera, so you can see how awesome the storms are. We'll see how brave I am when they start getting bad.

Glenna

[schen]

I formed the habit of hitting "ctrl-S" on my PC keyboard for save all the time.  I am sure Mac has an equivalent hot-key.  The CS2 I am using will only perform a save after ctrl-S when you made changes.  I may wear out my S key soon  ;D