Ne-ext . . .

[lurch]

One more for the critique crew. Funny how the backdrops on these (all two of them) seem to be coming out the same. I didn't do it on purpose, promise! Must be a Texas thang. My kids' school photos had blue backgrounds.





I'm counting on y'all.

[Johnboy]

Lurch,

When I say this photo in the gallery I thought I was looking at myself. I had a pair of glasses like that in my younger years. My hair was a lot longer on top and combed differently. However I never lived in Texas.

I would suggest adding some density to the cheek and nose area where there was damage. That area looks a little washed out to me. I would also suggest that you burn in the upper left corner to match or come close to the other corner. There appears to be some minor damage on the right at the shoulder/background line. There is also damage at the hair/background line on that same side. Maybe a little patch tool work on the background so it isn't so blotchy. It looks a lot better than it did.

Johnboy

[glennab]

Hi lurch

Nice work on a blitz of a photo.  Here are my observations:  I think you should bring the background all the way to the edge at the left, as you did with his shirt.  Also there's a lot of observable halo between the boy and the background. I find that the clone stamp with a soft egde at about 7px and 50% opacity will usually eliminate those uncomfortable transitions.  The only other thing that strikes me is that his skin could be a bit warmer.  Try pulling out some of the yellow, and possibly even desaturate just a little.

I'll defer to JB's more detailed remarks, except that I think your background looks fine.

JB, if that's what you looked like as a kid, you must have been a real cutie!

Hugs

GK

[Hannie]

Hi Lurch,

Another beautiful restore, you have done an incredible job bringing this cute boy back from the mold!  (Johnboy, now we want to see your childhood photo!)

When I did a quick levels on the original one thing that jumped out were his eyes, I've never seen eyes more blue than these.  I used your restore to try and get back some of the original color, the photo did come out very light though.

In case you want to use some of it this is what I did:

a quick levels in R. G and B
lower saturation in Yellow (-34) and red (-33)
duplicated layer and mode to screen
selective color adjustment layer, in whites: yellow -64
add layer in color mode and sample eye, lips and skin colors from the original photo

Hannie

[lurch]

Now that's the kind of response I love! Thank you all for good observations - just goes to show that several pairs of eyes are better than one. Now have a bunch of suggestions to make this one better.

[lurch]

How's this looking? Tried to address all your points as much as I could. Hannie, in all my color balance efforts the eyes stayed gray, so that's how I left them. They can be made blue if you want, however.



In the end, I'll probably burn in the (viewer) left of the background to make it not so bright. Not the way it seemed in the original, but . . .

[kiska]

It appears the jaw is too squared off on his left. Found a pretty good outline in the magenta channel of a cmyk copy.

[Hannie]

Nice pick, Kiska!

[lurch]

Kiska, good catch! I'll work on that. Between us all, we're going to end up with a super restoration :)