Work in Progress

[debibabb]

Hi all!  This is only my second restoration, and I jumped right into a more difficult one.  I've started it over a few times but am just going to keep going with this one.

Here's the original:


Here's what I've got right now:


I'm looking for feedback on two things: 

1. I really don't want her face or hair to look unnatural when I'm done.  Any suggestions on how to restore natural-looking shading to her face and hair would be great. 

2. Also, I'm not looking forward to navigating where her hair is falling onto her shirt.  Lots of messy stuff there.  I'll probably restore the shirt in around where the tendrils have fallen and then just have to recreate the tendrils as best I can.

Any other suggestions are more than welcome!

Thanks!
Debi

P.S. Isn't she adorable?

[Mhayes]

Hi Debi,

I think you have done a great job so far! What has made this photo so difficult is all the damage and the pattern of the paper coming through. Yes, you probably could have a little more shading in the face for details, but considering the shape that photo is in; you are doing a good job. You still have tough work ahead on the hair and the shirt. Here are some tutorial links that might be helpful for the hair: http://www.operationphotorescue.org/portfolio/tutorials/

Margie

[debibabb]

Margie,

Oh, I thought I'd seen the links to all tutorials, but I guess not!  I found a couple of good ones for making the hair look more realistic. Thanks. 

The shirt is actually going okay, since it's a repetitive pattern.  I'm cloning individual pattern squares into the discolored areas, and it's looking good. Where their are folds in the the shirt, I'll just take my time and do smaller work.

Debi

[Pat]

Hi Debi,

You are right this little girl is adorable!  And you are doing a great job with her so far.
Kevin did a fantastic workshop back in January:

http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,2994.0.html

You may find some of the tips he gave helpful with her shirt.

Pat

[kevinashworth]

Thanks Pat. Nice work Debi.

I've just had a quick play with this pic. The first pic is the general tidy up like you did, but with the paper texture removed using FFT filter. It's better to get rid of things like textures at the start, otherwise it keeps giving you problems.

Pic 2 is a duplicate layer of her face skin only - no sharp edges like eyes or nostrils, blurred and with a bit of noise added to make it seem smoother. You asked about shading so notice that both the dodge and burn brushes have been used a little bit, such as 'dodge' to highlight the nose, cheekbones and chin, and 'burn' to darken the shadow areas. Then i'd zoom right in and draw in things like eyelashes and other details.

Pic 3 shows that there's definitely scope to make a nice cleanup of the plaid jacket, and i've tried to make a new hair tassle using the 'blade of grass' brush, but there are better ways of going about it than that, like the 'draw hair in Photoshop By capriccio'  method in Margie's tutorials link. Hope this helps

[debibabb]

Thanks all!  Haven't had a chance to really work on this in a week or two.  Just now getting back to it.  Installed the FFT plug-in, but I'm running into a problem. I only have Photoshop Elements 5--not the full version of Photoshop.  So, I can't turn off color channels.  Has anyone successfully used the FFT in Photoshop Elements?

Thanks,
Debi

[debibabb]

Disregard my last message--just found a how-to on using FFT in PSE. ;-)

[debibabb]

It's been slow going, but here's what I have today.  I started over, ran the FFT (which helped a lot) and used some dodge/burn on her face.  Still looks a little artificial to me, but much better than my first attempt.  I still need to do some lightening toward the ends of her hair, I think. 

Any other suggestions, as always, are most welcome!



Thanks,
Debi

[Mhayes]

Deb,

I think you've done a great job. On my 2nd answer to this post is a link on hair that might help you put some highlights in that would separate the hair out so that it doesn't look solid. This is a minor pic on a really nice restore!

Margie

[kevinashworth]

Brilliant! :up2:

[debibabb]

Don't know what else I can do with this to make it better. I did add more texture and shading to her hair, but it's very subtle.  If there are no more suggestions, I'm going to turn it in!

Debi

[Hannie]

Debi, you have done a great job!

:up:

Hannie

[Mhayes]

Debi,

Great job on a hard photo!

Margie