Lots of Spots

[philbach]

 :-[I am coming along on the photo; there are still numerous areas that need touching up and I would appreciate some suggestions.



This is where I am now.  I had to paint several areas that were spotted out so to speak.  Perhaps the eyes are too bright/startling.

The gray point of the original is in the background in the top left area.

:'(

[lurch]

Hi Phil,

Your spots look like a perfect situation for frequency separation. Jonas, help me here with a reference link . . . If you used that technique you'd end up with a restore that looks more like a photograph and less like photo art. I've started using frequency splitting on almost all my restorations - I use it on a grayscale luminosity group and deal with the color later, once the luminosity is restored.

[philbach]

Lurch, good point about frequency separation.  I just learned how to do that and tried it here with poor results.  Lots of the spots were in the High frequency layer.  When I worked on it strange things happened.  What I forgot to do was to limit the clone tool to the single layer I was working on.  Ha.  Thanks

[Mhayes]

Phil,

The one thing I notice is that it looks like you have replaced the boy's eyes? In the original it looks like the he  is looking  to your right, but in yours he is staring straight on.

It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Margie

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Jonas, help me here with a reference link . . .

Here you go :-): http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,2687.0.html or for the original thread check this: http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=439098&page=1#post9585669

I'd suggest you use a pretty low radius for the separation (just so low that the dots start to disappear), paint in the color on a new layer in between on "Color" mode and use the clone stamp or healing brush on the high frequency layer to get rid of the spots.

Probably a little smudge could be used as well where nothing else works, but in most cases it's imo best, to repair and not to rebuild most of the images :-).

PS: Using a high pass with huge amount from the original image combined with a medium amount Gaussian blur on the resulting HP layer might help to get some of the original's shape back after repainting if applied in "Soft Light" mode to the restore.

[philbach]

Well the separation technique hasn't worked well for me yet.  Interestingly the area that responds to correction is the High frequency layer more so than the GB low frequency layer.

Margie, I agree about what you said.  I didn't replace the eyes but I did draw in the iris and pupil out of necessity.  The end result is as you described.  A very small error on my part makes a big difference on the eyes.

I guess I'll be back. 

Der it takes a fairly aggressive GB to cover up those big blemishes. 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.   

[Johnboy]

Phil,

Looks to me that your color is washed out in your restoration. The highlights on his face don't seem to have much definition. The shadows are disappearing. His red shirt looks like it is bleached out. I downloaded your original image and did a levels adjustment moving the black and white sliders in the RGB layers. To me the color seems better, and doesn't look as washed out.



I see what Margie is saying. When you did the pupils there it too much white of the eyes showing now compared to the original. Your pupils need to be larger along with repositioning.

Johnboy

[Hannie]

I like Johnboy's levels adjustments.  As for the eyes, I would zoom in 200% or more or work on pixel level to repair them.  The blue channel may be of some help to see what your repair should look like.  I often place the 2 photos (original and WIP) parallel next to each other and look back and forth frequently while I do the repairs. 

It would be great if most of the work in important features like eyes and mouth could be restored rather than repainted, no?

Hannie

[philbach]

Hannie I agree.  I am going to rework the photo.  The eyes turned out wrong but it didn't become obvious until I finished what I was doing and zoomed out.  But I will head back to the drawing board so to speak and start over.

[philbach]

I tried various flavors of frequency separation.  In all cases the Majority of the damage was in the High Frequency (Texture Layer).  Patching that layer blurred the photo a lot.  However I did do it to some parts of the photo.

I worked on the eyes which did seem to be aiming too much straight ahead so I feel that progress has been made.

[Johnboy]

I like the color in the latest version much better. To me the highlight and shadow along the jaw line (viewer left) looks quite sharp. Also along the chin line. Can that be soften some?

Johnboy

[philbach]

Good Point, Johnboy I will do that.

[Mhayes]

Phil,

I think you are doing a great job of repairing the damage and getting rid of the spots, but if I compare your latest version with JohnBoy's (color corrected version) in the blue channel; I see differences. The boy also has teeth showing at the bottom.



I feel like a real party pooper, but I have a problem with the color correction. I feel like JohnBoy's is closer to the original color than your latest. I think the colors look muted or dull. I'm not sure if this happened by doing the frequency separation? Or is this a case that you went with your original color correction and if so, by what method did you use? If I go to the blue channel, the white point looks like it should come in. However, because it has already been corrected you can't move the slider now without making it look bad.

I was curious as to whether the boy's hair is really as red as JohnBoy's Level's correction, so I called the owner of the photo and her husband said she would call me tomorrow. I also did a Curves Adjustment and came up with the same results.

Margie

[lurch]

Hi Phil,

I fiddled around with your original copy a bit to demonstrate for you how effective frequency separation can be, once you get the hang of it. Here's my CS5 workflow, more or less.

1) Do a color correction. In this case I used levels on a channel by channel basis.

2) Add a black and white adjustment layer using default values

3) Merge all visible layers to a new one and make a copy of that new layer. Name the two blur and hi pass (or texture or some such). Turn off the top (texture) layer, the black and white adjustment layer, the background layer, and the color correction layer.

4) Use Gaussian blur on the layer labeled blur with a radius that just gets rid of what you want to remove. In this case I used 4 pixels.

5) Use Apply Image to apply the blurred layer to the layer named texture. Set the mode to subtract, scale to 2, offset to 128. Leave other parameters alone. Set the layer mode to Linear Light.

6) Group the blur and texture layers, label the group, and set the group's blending mode to luminosity.

7) Do your cleanup on the texture layer, with whatever tools you prefer (clone stamp, healing brush, context aware healing . . .) using a good area as a source. For that process, set sampling to Current Layer. I like to clip a normal mode cleanup layer to the texture layer, but to do that you have to turn off all the other layers, set sampling to All Layers, and sort of work in the blind, on the squirrely gray Linear Light layer. You might have to clean up the blur layer also, if there are undesirable variations in luminosity as show up here.

8) (This is supposed to be the numeral eight followed by a left parenthesis, but it keeps being turned into a smiley.) Turn on the background and levels layers. Color the stains that remain on a color-mode layer above the luminosity group. I use a 100% brush set to color mode and sample a nearby good color.

This is the basic recipe; as you get experience you will modify it to taste, and to add in things like dodging and burning, etc. For my fiddling, I didn't do anything on a color layer - just went far enough to demonstrate cleaning up luminosity.

And Margie, FYI, frequency separation doesn't affect color balance in any way.

[Hannie]

Hi Phil,

Your damage repair looks great!  I always have trouble with hair, can never make it look right.  ???
This topic is so interesting and so much can be learned from it.  Lurch, thanks for the step by step tutorial.  I know Jonas made a tutorial on this method but it never hurts to have it explained a little more.

I agree with Margie that the colors/toning are still not right.  Below is the part of the OPR Handbook that deals with color correction:  (can't hurt to have a look at it again ;-))






This method works on most images, it is easy and gives a natural result.  It work particularly well on the this photo, from left to right: original, levels as by OPR Handbook, Phil's version:




Hannie