Okay?

[Judy]

I hope the people learned their lesson and never dressed this handsome gent like this for a photo again.  The suit behaved weirdly for the camera, IMO.  Our right side is much more clear than the left side.  Actually maybe that is a good thing as the left side is where the damage was.  I keep looking at the white spot near the knot on the tie on our right side, but I believe that is part of the original picture and has to do with seeing the shirt underneath.  However, there was an odd white spot on his collar near there and some small spots on his tie, so perhaps I am wrong.





Judy

[Mhayes]

Judy,

I imagine this handsome gent was able to dress himself and I think he looks nice---just not with the color correction you have done. I might have suggested a change to him had I known we would be restoring his suit some years later as the pattern will drive you crazy.  :D  The one small spot by the knot of his tie on your right is a button and has lost its detail on your restore. OK, now I see what you are referring to and my guess is the lightening. Here is the colors I came up with by using the neutral gray and white eye dropper in Curves.



The bottom part is showing some brown, but I believe that is from the flood water discoloration.

Margie

[kiska]

Judy, I'm sure he was dressed properly for that period of time. Hope his relatives don't see your post. :wow:

[Mhayes]

Judy, all kidding aside I really wondered about the correct color correction. If I did a Levels Adjustment the color went more to green like yours did, but Curves did not. I am sending a copy of the two by email to the owner to get her opinion. Normally I just send a link to the forum for them to view, but not a good idea in this case.  ::)

More later.

Margie

[schen]

Judy, he was wearing a button down point collar shirt and he tugged the vest under the points of the collar.  So the collar was puffed up and created a lot of space under collar and tie.  The portrait was taken with aperture wide open therefore the depth of field was very shallow.  Anything to the right of his tie was out of focus and blurred.  I think these are all pretty normal.

[Judy]

Wow, I didn't mean to insult anyone on the suit.  I have the same problem when I take pictures of shutters.  There is something weird that happens with them in a photograph.  I was interested that a professional photographer had issues with the suit, in that the pattern looks different everywhere.

Margie, I did do the curves color correction and came up with the colors posted.  I used the threshold levels to get the black and white points -- I chose a grays but various grays did not vary it that much.  I sort of liked the coloring, as it is not bright or anything.  It will be interesting to see what the person says it more real.  Yours looks too light to me.

Glad to know about that button -- it was taken out on purpose, as I stared at it and couldn't figure out what it was.  Didn't see anything on the other side, so I thought it just a white blotch.

Judy

[Mhayes]

Judy, I know you didn't mean to insult, but you do have to be careful what you say as owners occasionally read our forum.

Mine does look a little light and I think that is because of using the white eye dropper. It might have paid to do two Curves Adjustment--one grey point and the other with the white eye dropper and then dropping the opacity on the white.  I hardly ever use the threshold level to get black and white points, mainly because neutral gray does a better job. The other reason is that the black, unless you have a true black, makes the photo too dark. The same with the white and very seldom do you you have a true white or black. In this case you do have white with the collar.

When I find Neutral Gray, I follow what Dave Cross in NAPP developed and the technique is also in the OPR Hanbook and Glenna has mentioned it another post in the forum. You go up and add a new layer and check the box for 50% gray and in the same menu choose overlay (or softlight) and then click OK. Then go down to your Layers and under mode change to Difference. What that does is change to black any color that is the same as the 50% gray. I use the eye dropper that marks and try for 3 spots. I get rid of my difference layer---guess you could change the mode back to normal. I then do a Curves Adjustment and pick the middle  dropper for gray and click on the points marked. In this case it was the corner of the eye on your left. I never do the gray eye dropper by looks alone. If you want to be more exact you could use the threshold levels to see where the best black is in Difference. I then used the white eye dropper and I do think it sometimes blows the highlights out, but that can be toned down with opacity.

Will let you know what the owner thinks.

Margie

[Mhayes]

Judy, I got this email back from the owner:

"Sorry I missed your call, Margie. I think YOUR take on the color is closer than that of the volunteer, but I don't want to disparage anyone's work......I just really appreciate the effort."

I went back into Curves to adjust as my first version was too light.



On the computer at home, face is not so red.



Margie

[Hannie]

Margie, thanks for reminding me about the 50% grey layer in difference mode to find a good grey spot, I had forgotten all about it!

Hannie

[Judy]

It is always easy to offend if one is not in tune with what someone is saying, especially if people see the world differently (ala Meyer-Briggs).  As I say, my comment had totally to do with how photogenic the suit was, and nothing with style.  Some of the later comments offended me, actually, and I will try not to post on the forum any more.

I have changed the coloring so it is as close to Margie's as I can get and uploaded it.  I note that the person did not say that was spot on either.

Judy

[Mhayes]

Judy,

I'm sorry if you were offended as that was not my intention. I was trying to joke about the statement of dressing the young man up better, because from my viewpoint it might be taken as ridicule of how he looked rather than a statement of how "photogenic" the suit was. That frustration I can understand. No, I don't intend for it to be my way on color correcting and no other. All I was trying to do was explain that finding the gray point will give a closer color correction than finding the black/white points a lot of the times. Other times just a Levels Adjustment will do the trick.

I would hate to see you no longer on the forum and I am sorry that I offended you.

Margie

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Personally I don't like the Dave Cross method of blending a 50% gray layer in "Difference" mode in combination with the Threshold adj. layer too much.
That is because this method will not indicate areas of near neutrality, but rather areas near 50% gray.

So what I did to improve his method was simply to put another 50% gray layer underneath the "Difference" layer, but this time in "Luminosity" mode.
Now that all the luminosity is mapped to 50% gray, what's left is the color and therefore if we compare that to 50% gray, we should only get the nearest neutral areas :-).

(If you want to test this method against the "old" one, create a new document and create two stripes, one with RGB values of 192/128/64, one with RGB values of 192/196/196 and try both methods. You should be surprised!)

Here's a quicky with this method using a curves adj. layer in "Color" mode where I set the neutrals, another curves adj. layer in "Luminosity" mode to set black & white points (did you know, you can easily hold down the [Alt]/[Option] key to show you the clipping and thereby save the additional threshold adj. layer?) as well as an Hue/Saturation adj. layer in "Color" mode with saturation set to +25.



What I disliked about your version, Margie, was that the highlights seemed to have an undesirable cold cast now.

Edit: Maybe I'm just a freak though ☺.

[Tori803]

Hi Judy,

I'm sorry you were offended by some of the replies to your post. Please understand that no one means to hurt your feelings. We've all had our ups and downs with restorations, and suggestions typed out on the Forum often 'sound' harsher in print than they would if we could speak face to face. I've gotten my share of 'corrections' on the Forum, and I'm sure I will again. But all those suggestions have made me a much better restorer than I was to begin with. If you look at the Forum as a place to share and learn, you'll find it a great place to visit (and post!).

Tori

[Mhayes]

Thanks Tori, so true about how it is easier to express when face to face.

Jonas, thanks for posting another alternative and I intend to try it out. On mine I did not use it in combination with a Threshold Adjustment Layer--stopped using that long time ago. I try for 3 different points and see which gives the better result.

No, you are not a freak---just nuts (which is a good thing) about color correcting.  :funny:

Margie

[Johnboy]

Judy,

I am replying about the comment of the shoulder being out of focus. Schen is correct about his comment that the portrait being shot with the lens wide open or near to it. This is a portrait affect so that the face is the main focus of the photo. Don't be surprised that it shows up again in the future.

This is where I like the Patch tool. You can get good material and then line it up with the lines in the suit. Plus you get to see what it will look like as you place the good material. If it doesn't look right just back up in History.

Johnboy