Mother Daughter advice

[photomedium]

Here is the original photo

[photomedium]

Here is my work in progress. Any suggestions on the girls face and arm... seems a little blurry to me and i'm not sure if I should start again or try to improve what I have? Any other suggestions would also be appreciated.

[Hannie]

Hi Jim,

Great repair job!

For the girl's face you may try working on a copy of the green channel, damage seems a little easier to fix there and it has lots of contrast.  Then you can past it on your WIP as a luminosity layer with a hide all layer mask.  Just paint back the little face, you can even vary opacity.

For the arm, just above the elbow crease near the outer edge is a white spot (where the damage was) that you could blend in with the darker area around it.

I noticed that there is just a little bit missing at the bottom of your restore and at the top there is a funny little strip that shouldn't be there.  Perhaps you moved your top layer by accident?

Hannie

[Mhayes]

Hi Jim,

You have done a great job on repairing the damage. Besides what Hannie has mentioned, I wonder about your color correction. Normally I might try to find neutral gray and correct in Curves, but on this  doing a Level Corrections where each of the channels are corrected or Curves Adjustment and hitting the "auto" gave better results



I think the drapes are more of a beige and not with a greenish cast. The sofa while it has green in it, that is not the dominate color. On your left, the pillow is less green and more of a brown/organge. This photo was taken with a flash as you can tell by the red eye in the little girl. Because of the flash, it has blown out of the highlights of some colors. I would also lighten their hair so that it doesn't appear as black.

Margie

[photomedium]

Thank you Hanna and Margie for the advice. I still consider myself a restoration rookie and the help is very much appreciated.

Margie,
Your color correction does look better and I think its more accurate then mine. How do you correct the colors using the channels? When I color adjust I use a threshold layer to determine light and dark and then a curves adjustment layer and the RGB numbers to neutralize.

[Hannie]

Jim, the link below explains the levels and curves adjustment (ignore the Blue Channel part) that Margie mentioned.  It works really well most of the time but for this photo after doing the levels, hitting the auto for Curves adjustment is a good tip.

http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,3257.msg29326.html#msg29326

Hannie

[Mhayes]

Hi Jim,

The first thing you will always want to do on a restore is to color correct and a few photos may be OK, but faded out and that is where either a Level Adjustment or Cureves Adjustment Layer comes in. The great part about both is that they are not destructive to your photo and you can come back and change. I very seldom use a threshold layer, but there are times it is very helpful. In your photo the easiest is either Level or Curves Adjustment layer. The fastest this time was the Curves where hitting "Auto" did the trick. The great part about Levels is that you can see where the clipping occurs and bring the sliders in for better contrast. The black point slider on your left, the middle slider is the midton gamma slider, and the the white point slider on your right. Below is what the channels in Levels looked like on your photo and the arrows show moving them inward.



The Curves Adjustment is 4th example. I would recommend Katrin Eismann's book Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Even as PhotoShop updates, this book is great and you can download the exercises to work that appear in her book.

In this case pick either the Levels Adjustment or the Curves Adjustment, but not both.

Margie

[glennab]

Hi Jim

I can't add anything to the advice Margie gave you on the color correction.  When I went through my routine, I got basically the same tones.  What I wanted to comment on was the correction on the faces.  Your repair on both the little girl and Mom's faces seem a bit angular, so I tried my method, and I wanted to share what I got.  Usually I'll try cloning first with a very small brush (3 px) at about 70% - that's what I used this time.  I stay as close to the good skin as I can, and move around the shading to keep it as consistent as possible with the original. I go over each spot several times Once I get the repairs made, I back away a bit, and if I see any angularity, I reduce my opacity to 30%, give or take, make my brush larger and gently blend in the angles.  I didn't do anything but the faces, because that's what I wanted to show you.  I hope this helps in smoothing the skin.



The rest of your repairs are great.  Nice work.  Cheers!

GK

[photomedium]

Great... Help... thank you thank you thank you all....