Out of ideas

[Sonya K]

Let me start by showing you three versions of the photo that I'm working on, and I'll explain them below...

This one is obviously the original


In this image I have returned the background to the colours that mom says were the originals.  Mom also says that the t-shirt was brown and white striped.  So I used the healing brush and healed with a t-shirt texture to regain the original colours and texture.  Obviously it needs some refinement, but the basis is there.  I used the healing brush and healed with texture to fix the skin problems that I was having.  I took a sample of skin from my photo gallery and created my own swatch, as well as my own t-shirt swatches to use.
Now I know that I'm going to need to do some refining work, add in eyebrows, more realistic facial texture, contouring (his chin is too pointed) and work on the eyes, and fix the hair...



And that's where I'm stuck.  And frustrated.  Help!!!  Please!!!
I've got hair texture samples, if anyone will think that will work.  I just don't know.
I've saved my work in all various stages so I can go back to whatever work looked the best.
I thought healing with texture was brilliant....but maybe that was when I was working in the middle of the night...you know how that can be  ;)

Sonya K

[glennab]

Hi Sonya

I think you'd be better off to go back to the original and carefully clone contiguous areas of his face and hair with a small brush.  Tedious, I know, but it's the only way I've found to get a realistic look.  If you stay as close as possible to the area you're cloning, you can keep more of the original shading.  I'm finding that the healing brush and patch tool tend to pick up discolorations.  If the images had any unblemished areas, that might make a difference, but the difficults seldom give you that latitude.

I'd also make a softer transition between the colors on his t-shirt.  Especially at the top, the white looks pasted on rather than part of the shirt.

My experience so far is that anything that I try to recreate appears painterly.  The only thing with which I've had success along those lines is carpet in a difficult one that I've posted elsewhere (the original, not the restoration) with a plea for suggestions  - I'm dealing with the same frustrations you are.

Hang in there!  It's so much trial and error and a VERY steep learning curve as to what works and what doesn't.

Best wishes,

GG

[havril]

Hi Sonya This is a method I sometimes use with problems like these. Maybe it with help.

TO REMOVE WHITE DOTS
Go into  layer>new>layer via copy. then go into window>layers and change the mode from normal to  Darken . Then go into the filter>noise>dust and scratches. Alter the slides according to needs in most cases ignore the threshold slider and  move the radius until the spots disappear but you are left with details. In this case I move the radius slider to 2.
TO REMOVE BLACK DOTS

do exactly the same but change the mode to lighten.

Hope this helps
Harvey

[marylou]

Hi Sonya...what I'm about to explain is similar to havril's method but imo allows a little more control.

Go to dust and scratches, radius about 4 and threshold about 15 should do the trick.
Go to you history palette and take a snapshot of your layer by clicking on the icon of the camera at the bottom of the palette.
Then scroll to the top of your history palette and click in the box next to your snapshot (you should now see the history brush in that box).
While your still in your history palette go back one step by removing dust and scratches, being that it's memorized in your snapshot (now your photo will be the way it was when you started).
Now go to your tool bar and select the history brush and change the mode from normal to darken to make the lighter defects disappear by painting on those areas that need to be corrected with a soft round brush, then change the mode to lighten to cancel the darker defects.

As you can see by using the history brush you can choose the areas that need  to be corrected while leaving those sensitive areas such as the eyes, nose, mouth and hair alone. You could choose to lower the opacity and use a smaller brush for those sensitive areas which would allow you to keep as much detail as possible. Now that most of the defects are gone you can concentrate on refining the rest.  :up:

[havril]

Hi Marylou,
Love it!!!    It is a great method for dealing with the problem of losing definition with blurring. I have already used it to good effect on a picture I am working on at the moment.

Harvey

[Sonya K]

Thanks for the ideas.  You know how sometimes you just need fresh eyes on a photo.

I've tried those things on other photos before, but just never thought of it for this one.  I feel kind of silly.

I actually ended up doing a combination of things.

I duplicated my working layer twice.  I changed the blending mode on one to lighten and on the other to darken.

I hid the darken layer.  Then I nudged the lighten layer down two and to the right two, added a layer mask and inverted it. 
Then I used a small soft  white brush at 100% opacity to dab over the dark spots.

Then I hid the lighten layer and repeated my steps on the darken layer, only I dabbed over the light spots. 

Then I made the lighten layer visible again and did a Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E to get a new working layer and then used the dust and scratches on the photo with the history brush.

And then I used a bit of the healing brush with my skin texture to add a bit of cheek and texture that was more uniform, and just lowered the fill and opacity so I wouldn't lose the shading.

I'll post the photo later this evening so you can give me your thoughts.

Sonya

[marylou]

I learned this method from Eddie Tapp's video tutorial "Back to the future scanner dust spotting"  at:

www.photoworkshop.com

For anyone who is interested, you can find some great video tutorials by clicking on Adobe Training Arena on their home page. ;)

[Sonya K]

I learned the method from Katrin Eismann's book "Photoshop Restoration & Retouching".....
It's full of tidbits of information that I've been able to use, but often forget to refer to when I'm stuck....go figure.
I'll check out the web page you mentioned.  Thanks for the info.  :up:

[marylou]

That's an excellent book. I have the first edition of it and I had to read about 3 times before everything got stuck in my head. I would have to say that it's thanks to that book that made me go crazy about retouching and restoring photos. :D  Best wishes and looking forward to seeing your work when your done.