Help with tweed and blemish rules

[raarons]

Hi All.  Two questions:  It appears that the original photographer did a relatively poor job on retouching a blemish on the cheek of a portrait subject. Do I attempt to improve it or let it go?  Second, does anybody have an idea on dealing with damage to a soft tweed pattern.  I'll attempt to upload the images. Thanks. Dick.  

[Mhayes]

Hi Dick,

Welcome to the forum. When posting a question to the forum, it helps to post the photo so that we can make a judgement call, otherwise we would be flying blind. If you have not signed up, I would suggest Photobucket (see left hand column) so that you can post the photo.

I went into PhotoShelter to see what you were talking about and I do not think the photographer had anything to do with the blemish you are talking about. This is water damage. There is a chance he had a pimple or a mole but the damage around that is water damage. So yes, do repair. Also, this photo is is need of color correcting which I hope you did first.

What I would do on a photo like this to take care of the damage areas of the tweed jacked is to borrow from the good side. I would have my background layer---second layer the color corrected one and then a copy of it---the top layer will be one that I will either merge with the 2nd layer or will be the one I do a "merge visible."  Then I would take the lasso tool (2 px feather) and circle a good portion of pattern that I want to use---will do this multiple times. Then hit "Crt or Cmd J" to duplicate your selection. Use the shortcut key for move: "V" and then hit the arrow keys to move into place. Go up (PhotoShop) to Edit and pick transform( or hit Ctrl T) and in this case I would use rotate and where you see the arrows rotate how you want. If you hold the ship key and put your mouse of tablet pen on the square you can make your selection smaller. Then I do a layer mask and conceal all---hold down the "Alt" key and hit the layer mask icon to conceal all and paint back in what you want---can go the other way on the mask and paint out what you don't want. Hope this is not plain as mud as I'm not sure how comfortable you are with layer masks?

Before you upload your photo back, I noticed something we did wrong and that is the dpi on your photo which is 72 dpi and it should be 300. The dimension are 20.833 x 29.167, so this will be an easy fix. Take your crop tool at 5 x 7 at 300 dpi and use it to bring the photo back to the correct dimensions. Sorry about that---ever once in awhile one slips past us.  ::)
I have posted your photo.



Hope to see you on the forum again, we would love to help when you have questions.

Margie

[raarons]

Margie,
Thank you very much for the input. I put your suggestions to work. I have made the color corrections and hope to upload them later today after I set up photo bucket.
Dick

[Mhayes]

Hi Dick,

It looks like what you have pasted into your post is the html code, but what you want instead is the last option in Photobucket called "IMG Code." Log back in to Photobucket and click on your photo until you see it say "saved" or right click and hit save. You can go back into this post and on the upper right hand corner you will see "Modify."  This will allow you to get back into your post and delete the html code and paste in the "IMG Code." If you hit preview you should see your photo rather than a link. When done, hit the save button at the end.

Margie

[raarons]

Color corrected image.

[Mhayes]

Dick, great job on the cleanup of all the white dots. You still have on your right side have the yellow splotch that is damage and needs to be repaired. This wasn't a good one for a Levels Adjustment and when I did mine in Curves; I did not have the brownish tint that I am seeing in yours. For a comparison do a Curves Adjust by the lazy way of hitting the Auto button. I end up getting a cooler version and the tweed jacket no longer has a greenish brown coloring in certain spots. Plus, the tie has less orange in it. I'm not saying my version is the right, but wonder if you need some tweaking away from brown in the background and in his jacket. Another trick is to blow the photo up to 200% to 300% and look for areas where the color had bled or where there are still small specks---around the tie into the jacket.

Nice job!

Margie

[raarons]

Margie,
Thank you for your help. I'll be working on it over the weekend and will try your suggestions.
Dick

[kiska]

I tried lowering the magenta first, then the basics.
oops! Top curves is medium gray.

[Hannie]

I can't figure out why part of the shirt is stained yellow and part stayed white.  Same with the spot on his forehead, it turned yellow but the whites of his eyes didn't...  ::)

Hannie

[kiska]

'cause   :funny:

[lurch]

 :funny:

[Pat]

It's a mystery, like much in life.   :-\

Pat

[Mhayes]

You gals are too much!  :funny:

Margie

[Hannie]

How disrespectful, I will make notes of these comments in my little black book!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-FmZacGJIE&feature=related

[glennab]

Hi Dick

I color corrected your image using levels - just bringing the sliders in until I reached color information on each channel - and this is what I got.  I think the colors are more vibrant than any of the other images I've seen on this thread, and I prefer the vibrancy on this one.



However, what baffles me is that I started by using the curves eyedroppers and got a totally different correction, and when I used the info box and ran the eyedropper around the image there was virtually no yellow and black indicated in the CYMK info area (I usually use that to check skin color balance) on the bottom half of the image.  That would make me wonder if the file has a problem from the get-go.  It may be why everyone is getting strange colors and artifacts.  I'm afraid that I'm not savvy enough to have a clue how to troubleshoot that.  Maybe our Authoritah has some ideas.  I mean that in the most respectful way, Ms. Hun!

GK