Charlene's Workshop

[Charlene5]

Please don't beat me Margie - I know this is in the wrong section but I thought I would brighten up your office with my magnetic presence  ;D

Kev I just started on these two today.  I chose this picture because of the gentleman's remarkable ears. 

The picture was (I think) in one of those "magnetic" photo albums with the sticky stuff on the page and the plastic sheet that goes across the picture.  That's where all the ripples and drips came from.  The first thing I do with a new picture is make a duplicate and put the original away.  Then I start to fiddle with levels and curves - neither of which I am very good at.  I then use the Black and White filter (which I don't think is in CS2?) to desaturate it.  In CS2 I think I used to look at all three channels and see if one was markedly better than the other.  We've arrived at black and white and this is what it all looks like now:



I have five layers.  I duplicate the original color corrected version and that goes at the top of the pile and it is turned off.  I use it for comparison or in an emergency I can snip out a bit to paste in the working copy to start over on something that has gone horribly wrong.  Next down is a layer I called guideline - it's the outline of the missing edge of the lady's sleeve so I can duplicate the shape properly.  I have to remember not to merge that into the working copy.  Next down is an inverted copy of the original.  If you have a lot of dripping and water sliding down a picture the inverse gives a very clear picture of where it is.  Next is a copy of her dress because I like to do major work on a copy.  I'll leave that until I'm happy with it then merge it back to the working copy.  I almost always do the background first for two reasons:  Everything in the picture is on top of the background and it gives me a chance to passively study the picture.  The background still needs some work here and there but it's better than it was.  I used a combination of cut and paste, patch tool, and shrieking for that.  After that I moved on to her dress:



One of the joys of this work is that 95% of the time we get pictures that have water damage on top of normal age damage and it's impossible to separate the two.  If you look at the whole of her dress you'll see parts that are very dark - that's a common thing in an old black and white.  The darks get darker until they're flat black and can't get any darker.  I'll be lightening up those areas using Quick Mask, a levels layer, and a whack with the "refine mask" thingy.  Works a treat.  Anything really persistent gets slapped with a cut and paste or the clone tool.  I started working on the missing bits of her sleeve.  There's some paint, some cut and paste, and some repair.  After the dress is finished I'll go back and put some grain into the paint so it looks well, less painted.  I stopped because I realized that I'd started on the wrong bit.  He's behind her, so I should be doing his suit first.  Her sleeve is on top of him.  I leave the faces and the hair for last.  Remember to save your work at least every 15 minutes.  There is nothing more heartbreaking than to have Photoshop crash after you've been working away for hours and forgotten to save.  Done that.  Don't recommend it.

Now that I've bored you into a coma I'll go figure out what to do with his suit!

[kevinashworth]

The way you approach it is very akin to mine, except i desaturate first, then do curves and levels. Like you i prefer to keep the comparison layer at the top, and lasso bits when needed!

Same goes for the adding grain to the painted bits. I got a bit lost with the refine mask thingy, but it's cool to know that someone else's working practices are almost the same as mine.

I don't use masks. Never have done. I'd rather lasso the bit in question, copy it to a layer of it's own and work on it there and merge it back in afterwards. I'll probably get into them at some point though.

I'm glad CS5 have fixed the healing brush so it's possible to work close to an edge without the brush sampling from it. Spent many frustrating times in that situation.

Thanks for that Charlene it wasn't boring to me, quite the opposite. I'd like to see the finished product.

Now we'd better clear off out of Margie's office!

[Mhayes]

Imagine my surprise (and amusement) this morning when I realized She-Who-Likes-Trouble (aka Charlene5) was whisked away from one post and dropped into another. We try not to beat volunteers here and only relocate when necessary.  :funny:

You are off to a great start and thanks for the tutorial which was great and not boring. I like that you gave the reasoning behind the actions.

Kev, you need to learn to use masks, they are a life safer. Don't worry about the refine mask, but start out as you would regularly. I use the lasso tool and put that selection on its own layer. Here is where the beauty of the mask comes in. If you hit the mask buttor at the bottom, your layer is visible, but if you hold down the alt key and hit the mask button it is concealed. Next get a brush--soft--and if your mask is visible, but you want to conceal parts--make sure your background on the left is white and the foreground is black. You will now have concealed what you don't want, but the beauty is that if you make a mistake you can change the brush back to a white foreground and bring it back. There are a lot more things you can do with masks, but once you get comfortable with them you will wonder how you could have done without them.


Margie

[Charlene5]

Why Margie how nice to see you <koff>  ;D  I thought I'd add something to this essay because this particular little mask thing is one I use all the time and it took me forever to figure it out.  T'is very handy indeed for things too light, too dark, or mismatched.

This is a shot of the lady's neck where the water got to the picture.  I could clone it but I won't because I'm clumsy with the clone stamp.  I'm nearly as bad with the healing brush.  I shall use a litle mask and a sneaky layers level.



I'm working on the extra layer that includes her dress.  Press the letter Q and the layer typeface changes to bold.  You've entered the realm of Quick Mask!



I think the the paint colors automatically go back to the default black and white as well.  Choose yourself a very soft brush and "paint" the area you want to correct.  The color will show up as red but that's only to let you see what you're doing.  It's not really red.  If you color outside the lines press the X key and paint color shifts to white and you can "erase" with it.  Hit the X again and it goes back to black.  This is what it looked like when ready to go:



Press the letter Q again and the layer name goes back to regular type.  You've left Quick Mask.  You'll have the marching ants around your painted bit and the red is gone.  Press Shift/Ctrl/I or use the drop down Selection menu and select inverse.  You want to be only changing your little area, not what's around it. 

Open a levels adjustment layer.  Because I want to make this bit of neck darker I'll be moving the lower slider in from the right:



If you were making it lighter you'd be working from the opposite end.  Play with the slider until it looks good to you.  You can always go back and readjust it if you don't like the result. 

Go up to the Select menu and choose Modify Mask.  I'm going to fuzzy up the edges so that the repair isn't so crisp and clean.  I moved the feather slider over towards 4 pixels and pressed OK.



Merge your mask layer with the working layer and see how it looks:



It's not bad but that dark outline needs to go.  On a blank layer above I used the spot healing brish and voila, all is well:



What I really like about this method is that you don't disturb any pixels.  They're all where they started and I don't have to worry about getting the gradations of color or shadow right.  It's automatic.  It sounds complicated but it's not at all.  I don't do complicated.  Go try it.

[Hannie]

Gotta love those pixel saving tutorials!

Great job MJ, thanks.

Hannie

[david_gr]

Charlene,

Thanks for the explanation of masks. It looks to me that you can use masks to select an area using a brush instead of another tool like say a lasso.  I never saw what masks were good for before. 

Anytime you feel like giving a lesson, GO FOR IT.   :up:

David Gr

[Pat]

Thank you so much Charlene!  I've never really given masks a try before but after seeing your tutorial that's definitely going to change.

Pat

[Charlene5]

Just the concept of masks used to freak me out - it sounds so technical and scary.  The one I wrote about - the color/shade correction - was in a book I had and it sounded like something I could use.  I decided to give it a try.  The result was so magical that I found myself using masks for all sorts of things.  I am happy that I could share some of what I know and really pleased that you found it useful. The hardest part was actually doing that first mask.  Masks are intimidating.  Once I did it and understood the process it was smooth sailing from there.