2nd attempt

[MichiganRob]

Hi y'all

I've been working on this restore that you were all so kind as to comment on yesterday, I started over, and the first thing I did was color correct the photo, strictly following the steps laid out in a tutorial posted by glenab at this link

http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,1304.msg13416.html#msg13416

I'm posting the photos at a larger size as requested by Hannie

Here is the original



I'm still having a couple problems as you can see from my restore photo below.




1.  I don't know what to do with the woman's hands, there is no finger detail in the original by which I could reconstruct the folded hands.  I'd bring in hands from elsewhere but that's not allowed...could someone help me with a solution please?

2.  The girl standing in the back has some problems around her mouth, I'm still working on that.

Given the overwhelming response  as to the gender of the child on the left I was forced to agree that it is indeed a girl and as such the white hair band on top of her head remains.  I also added some detail to her shirt as someone suggested yesterday.

Any other comments or advice would be greatly appreciated, I am still working on it and will post the finished image when it is completed.

Thanks,
Rob

[gypsy72]

great job so far, the white shirts don't seem quite so blown out this time. and the girl's nose is looking better too!

i wish i could help with recreating the hands, but i haven't ever done anything that extensive before. i might suggest getting the basic shape to the proportion/size you want before worrying about the detail in the fingers, you might not need as much of the fingers showing as you might think.  Can you see any better detail of her hands in one color channel better than another?

a couple small things - watch the shape of the mothers neckline on her dress, there is kind of an odd bump in it, and the cuff on the dad's arm, you might try and save the detail from the cuff instead of bringing the sleeve design down all the way. is it possible to save some of the shadow detail behind where the mom's hair  & dad's shoulder meets on the girl behind them, that area looks a little flat, but i don't know if that is an effect of the color correction or not?

but it's looking great so far!

[Hannie]

Great clean up Rob, I like Gypsy's suggestions also.  Perhaps if you would not paint over the areas where there is is shading/shadow (white clothes) and there where the edge of the hair meets the background?  That way you keep the original detail and you won't get the dreaded "painted" look.  (I know it will be a tedious job to restore the area but you will like the result!)
The hands look fine, adding a little shadow will help.

Great job,

Hannie

[glennab]

Looking good, Rob. Gypsy and Hannie have nailed anything I saw that could be troublesome.

Might I make a request?  Would you keep all of your work on a restoration in one thread?  Not a big deal, but I like to follow a restoration from start to finish, and it's easier if the entire process is in one place. I don't know about the rest of the crew, but I learn so much from each person's efforts and the responses to pleas for help.  I even learn when I download another person's restoration to see if I can help.  What an awesome job we have!

Did you find the color tutorial helpful, or was it too cumbersome? I was so taken by that technique, because I don't have a well-calibrated monitor, and I like to at least start with color correcting by numbers.  It's interesting to me that sometimes it works better than others, but it's a good start at least.

Kudos for all your great work.  We certainly have acquired some talented newbies!

Cheers,

GK

[Johnboy]

Rob.

You are looking good. The color is much better.

As near as I can tell no one addressed the girls lip. In looking at the before and after photos I downloaded I would say there is still some damage there. I would suggest that you use the Patch tool. Encircle the upper lip area and drag the selection along the lip line keeping the image aligned the best you can to a good portion on the lip. You might find that it would be best to do this in small sections until you get to the corner of the mouth. The nice thing about the Patch tool is that it samples the tones around selection and does a good job of blending. If you get "hickeys" in your results try selecting larger or smaller portions. Then there are times it just doesn't work and you regroup. In looking at the original there is some shadow in that corner of her mouth. Be careful not to loose that. I also notice there is some damage extending into the area just beyond the corner of the mouth. Patch tool on that, and dragging to her cheek may take care of it.

I seem to be a Patch tool fanatic as I use it a lot in many of my restores. Without the Patch tool I may not have gotten started in OPR when I did.

When I look at the mother's hands I notice something that could be damage on the wrist of the covered hand. Patch tool can clear that too.

Good luck in the touch up work. Sometimes that is as tedious as the whole restore.

Johnboy

[MichiganRob]

Hello everyone I'm going to post an updated restoration here now.  First I'll answer a couple of questions and requests.

Johnboy:

I must admit to an ignorance of the patch tool, I knew it was there but have never used it.  Now thanks to you I have a new tool that I will probably use quite regularly.  It really helped on the girl's lip and other areas of damage on her face.  The lips and face look much better now I think.

Thank you

Glenab:

Sorry, my bad, I will keep the restoration in a single thread from now on..  I found the tutorial you posted very useful, I think it did a great job and it will be the first thing that I do to my projects in the future.  I will have to internalize the steps by referrring back to the tutorial because a couple of times I went to the new adjustment layer and selected curves rather than threshold and then couldn't figure out where my sliders were...lol.  But I think after a couple more times it will be burned in my brain.

Thankjyou

Hannie: 

I think this version will be better with regard to the shading where different textures meet.  I also worked on the hands some more and I think they are better but maybe just need a bit more,

Thank you

Gypsy:  I think I've fixed the lopsided chest and added a cuff to dads shirt aas well as tried to make the photo look less flat and painted in.  There are still areas I think I can improve, but it's getting there,

Thank you

Now here is where I'm at



Thanx all
MichiganRob

[schen]

Rob,

Nice job.

One of the magic with yellow muck damage is that you may find the details of the original in the blue channel.  The green sketch below is what I saw for the mother's hands:

[Hannie]

Hi Rob,

I hope you are not feeling discouraged, you really are doing a great job and with a little patience it will look just the way you like it!
Shujen's suggestion to look at the blue channel is great.  The blue channel is such a big help when there is a lot of yellow damage.  Nearly always you can find missing detail there.
This is what the hands look like, it may help you:



I also noticed that the original photo has a little more info for the arm area of your little girl on the left.



I used a color adjustment layer and set the cyan/red slider to -34, this will take some the red cast away.

I selected the background (did a real messy job here, need more time to make a clean selection!)
In the Selective Color Adjustment layer I made some adjustments just for the background:
Blues:   cyan +21
Magentas:  cyan +100; magenta -100; yellow -100, black +100
Whites:  cyan +26
Neutrals:  magenta -7

Good luck!



Hannie

[MichiganRob]

Hi gang

I've finished the restore, uploaded and accepted, thank you all very much for your help, I couldn't have done it without your suggestions and critiques.

MichiganRob

[gypsy72]

great  job!!!

[Mhayes]

Looks great!  :up:

Margie

[Hannie]

Good job, Rob!

Hannie