Wedding Dance

[oehlers]

Just finished my first attempt at my first picture. Hope that I'm posting the link correctly:




http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/BoATY20oMJ3LM4vuybmBbg?feat=directlink

I've cleaned up the obvious damage, and worked on the color. Things that still bother me on this one:
1. Overall the photo still looks a bit blurry and muted.
2. The garland around the window is a bit tricky - I've worked with it quite a bit but still not loving it.
3. The arm to the right of the dancers is rather odd - I didn't get rid of it, but it doesn't add much to the picture.

Any suggestions? (Be kind - I'm a newbie! :-\)
Thanks,
Susan

[glennab]

Hi Ms Newbie Susan

Welcome to OPR from Florida!

I'll try my best to give you some useful feedback on this one.  First, I think you might want to do a bit more color correction.  It appears to me that you may have a bit too much blue.  (I don't know if you've found them yet, but we have several tutorials on color correction that work well most of the time.  There are other times when you'll have to do extra tweaking.  Often color correction with curves will get rid of the darker areas that should have more definition, as in the man's lower face.)

As for the blurry photo – many of these are snapshots, so many weren't as sharp as they should have been to begin with.  We try not to do much, if any, sharpening.  The only sharpening I ever do is with the high-pass filter, and then very seldom and subtly.  Most of the time more flaws will appear with sharpening, and we have plenty of those to go around already.

Margie or your distribution coordinator can verify my opinion, but I'd lose the floating arm.  It adds nothing to the restoration, and it's not identifiable as a particular person's appendage.

I'm sure someone else will have an easier method of dealing with the garland, but I'd delete some of the cloned white areas, as they LOOK cloned.  As for the outer edge, you could duplicate areas of the inside and flip them to be on the outside then use the delete if white on your layer to keep the peach background color and the soft edges, or leave what's there, clean it up as best you can up to the "furry" edges, and where the muck is really bad duplicate another area and place it over the damage.  Move it around until it looks good – it doesn't have to match exactly.  The idea is to maintain the overall look of something that far in the background and don't worry about its being perfect.

Cheers!

GK

[Mhayes]

Hi Susan,

You have some good questions and I think GK is spot on with her advice. Post your progress as you make changes and we will help.

Margie

[Hannie]

Hi Susan,

Congratulations on your first restore, you have done a lot of cleaning up on this photo!

I also agree on the levels adjustment, below the image on the left is the original with a levels adjustment layer in R, G an B as suggested.  I also lowered the red and yellow saturation just a little in a saturation adjustment layer.  Even the contrast I brought down a notch (-5) so more detail remains visible of the men's face and the lady's hair.

The background plus garland can be cloned/healed back that way if you wish and then there will be no need to paint over them and that may make it look more natural.

Hannie

[oehlers]

Thanks everyone for all your advice! :loveit: I'm going to take my time on this first picture and rework it with everyone's input. Also, I want to go through all of the tutorials and pick up what tips I can. Hannie your fix looks great  :up2: I'm going back to the drawing board to see what I can do. This is such fun - how do you get anything else done in life? Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Have a good evening,
Susan

[oehlers]

OK, here goes the second attempt. What do you think? I took one more liberty with the picture - after removing the odd elbow on the right I noticed that there was someone behind the dancers. Again, you can't make out who it is, but the dark area between the dancers faces seems to make there faces less distinct. So I took it out. I like the result, but is this going too far?

[oehlers]

I did some more work on the garland and tweaking a few other areas. But I think it's done. :)