Advice on white splotches

[corpusdei]

This most recent photo is coming along pretty well, but I wanted to see if there was a better approach to these white splotches covering several areas:

Original:


WIP:


The background has a few details that I'm going to try to mask through, though I'm not certain how successful that'll be.  Bambi also gave me some great advice on knocking back a lot of the color noise from the original, and bumping up the contrast and saturation have helped minimize the white as it goes across the people, but there's still some areas that it's very evident (on her skirt, for example).  Any ideas on how that can be removed / reduced?  (I'm still playing with the saturation and contrast, since the hair on the guy on the left still seems a little washed out)

[glennab]

Hi CD

If you're talking about the areas of general lightness, I'd suggest using a dodge and burn layer.  Make a new layer and fill it with 50% gray set to the Overlay blend mode.  Use a brush at whatever size and opacity (it's usually most effective if you start low) you think will be most effective and switch from black to white to make your "splotches" darker or lighter.

Your restoration is looking good!

GK

[Hannie]

Great restore so far CD!

With Glenna's great tip you should be able to minimize the white. 
For the spots that you marked, I would zoom in 300% (or more) and try and clone as much as possible from the good parts. 
For the girl's left side hair you could copy and paste part of the right side, making sure to warp it some so it looks different.

Hannie

[corpusdei]

Down to the last man standing:

WIP Rev PA2:


Still tweaking her hair and the transition to the dark background behind.  Now comes my favourite part.  Massive consumption of alcohol, potentially bordering on heroic, while I try to figure out what to do about right hand guy's head.

Tweaked the contrast and brightness and painting on a 50% grey shadow/highlight layer to get the hair on left side guy looking better.  Working on some of the same to clean up her skirt.  Blending in her hair to the shadows is taking some time too.  Guy on the right .... well ...  um .... he's on the agenda.  Fixing that splotch should just be a matter of doing ... stuff, followed by some detailed stuff, then a quick layer of incredibly talented stuff.  I'll ... uh ... get back to you on the details.

Seriously, though, I think I can guestimate the inner and outer hairline and sketch the outlines prior to filling via C&P or clone brush and that should work.  Still, somewhere between now and then I'm still hoping for that fabled "easy" button.  We really need to get to work on that button.

[corpusdei]

Oh, and a protip - if you're using a bright neon green color to make sketches of likely head and hair shapes, make sure that you're drawing on the right layer.  And if you aren't, make sure that you're not making enough actions to overrun photoshops history / undo buffer.  Otherwise you end up with this on your working layer:



The choice of losing 2 hours work since your last save or spending an hour and a half cleaning up bright green streaks ain't a particularly pleasant one to make.

[Hannie]

 ;D  Been there, done that. (and worse)

Your restore is coming along great!

Hannie

[corpusdei]

OK, after lots of cloning and more C&P layers than I'd been prepared to expect (along with some gentle smoothing through a frequency separation) I think this one's done.  I say think, because I've gone cross-eyed and may now be in danger of running into doors.  So while I work that cross-eyed thing out, any suggestions or additional touchups that I might be able to make on this one?

[Hannie]

Only think that jumps out for me is the hairline of the man on our right, a little softening perhaps?

Great job on a difficult restore!

Hannie

[corpusdei]

Ahhhh ... I see what you did there.  Thanks for the catch!  I'll tweak and get this one on its way :D