Star Wars

[schen]

The couch looks good.  You might want to add some shading to the wall.  The right of the wall is darker than the left on both sides.

Shujen

[pic-dr]

Larry, I forgot to tell you to remove the embedded personal information on your photos before posting to the forum.
This link will tell you exactly how to do that.

Thanks,

Hannie

Hi Hannie, I read that link about changing the file names, but it was for Mac users, and I use a PC. I'm a bit confused about how to comply with this. Do I make copies of the original files with new names before working on them and either posting them here or sending them up to Photobucket and then I rename them back to the originals when I'm finished?  :-\

Scratch that last question--I figured out how to remove the personal info through Elements. Is it necessary to replace that information when sending it back to Photoshelter though?

[pic-dr]

Much, much better. Isn't Photoshop fun?

Bambi

Thank you Bambi! And yes, the new version of Elements is nothing short of astounding! I can't wait until I learn how to use all the new features  :)

Is this picture now ready to be uploaded to you? And if it is, should I just upload it to Photoshelter, or send via email to you?

[pic-dr]

The couch looks good.  You might want to add some shading to the wall.  The right of the wall is darker than the left on both sides.

Shujen

Hi Shujen,

I can't tell any difference on the walls on my monitor--it is not a professional screen by any means--it was the least expensive 22" monitor I could get when I bought it a couple of years ago. But how would I add shading to the offending portions of the wall? I am now using Elements 10 if that helps..

[schen]

Here are the two strips of the top of the photo from your first restoration and the last restoration.  You can see that the top strip has variations of brightness and the bottom one is flat.

[pic-dr]

Here are the two strips of the top of the photo from your first restoration and the last restoration.  You can see that the top strip has variations of brightness and the bottom one is flat.

OK, I can see that in those strips, any suggestions how to correct that? I'm using PS Elements 10.

[schen]

The walls in the first attempt was pretty good.  You just need to even out several blotches.  Mike's example showed a good restoration of the walls.

Try to resist the temptation to paint over the large area.  Painting often looks flat and artificial.

[pic-dr]

The walls in the first attempt was pretty good.  You just need to even out several blotches.  Mike's example showed a good restoration of the walls.

Try to resist the temptation to paint over the large area.  Painting often looks flat and artificial.

I agree the walls do appear flat. Would I be best off starting again from scratch then? None of my other wips have saved layers that would allow me to isolate the walls. I was under the impression that Margie thought it was finished, but I will defer to your judgement. I'd like to get it as good as possible.

I think next time I will save more layer masks between making large changes to the pic to avoid having to restart from the beginning if I make a mistake as in this example. I mean, like once after fixing the borders, another after doing the floors, etc, etc.

I wonder if I could select the walls, and then introduce a very slight amount of noise to them. Not a perfect fix, but perhaps a decent band-aid solution.

[Mhayes]

Larry, I may miss some things that others will catch. The deciding factor as to whether you still need to do further work with your photo rests with your distributor. It's hard to download your version from the forum and judge as it is low resolution.

It would help you for you to practice more with your software and get familiar with it first. Another way to practice is to copy photos posted on the forum of before and afters and see if you match the results. Although there is a lot similar between PS Elements and PhotoShop, there are differences and we may be at a loss for advice.

You have your original and you have your WIP in progress---open the original and save it as a .psd and then take your 2nd Wip in progress and drop on top of this new file as a 2nd layer. You could do a layer mask and conceal all and then bring back only the parts of the wall you want to keep. If you have the patch tool or the clone tool, work on the splotches. Do NOT Paint in those parts. Because you are just learning layer masks, I would recommend you take some time and practice with your software. It will take practice and you need to know how to use the tools in your software.

You are really improving, so take some time out to practice. You will reach a point where you will still get a restore that stumps you (we all do), but it will be how to handle it, not how to handle your software tools. Until you get more comfortable with them, it will be like painting by the numbers rather than understanding why you are doing something a certain way.

Margie

[Hannie]

Larry, the fastest way to post a photo on the forum without the personal information is to make a copy of your WIP and upload that to Photobucket.  That way your "home" version will stay intact and the Photobucket version will have no personal information displayed on the forum.

Hannie

[Mhayes]

Larry, here is what Hannie is talking about.



Having photos posted with the personal info showing used to be such a problem that no matter how much we asked volunteers to remove it, we decided that we were talking ourselves blue in the face to no avail. So we decided that on the last two runs, we would only have the name embedded in the personal info file. However, there are a few still out that have this on them and yours came from a woman hit by Hurricane Katrina that we had missed posting. That is why hers still has the personal info showing. Because you are a new volunteer and the changes to the photos were made prior to your joining, you really would not have been aware of this or even needed to do any removals before posting.

Margie

[pic-dr]

I would like to thank all who have replied to my questions. I think you are right, I will learn more about the program and slow things down a bit (a lot) until I get a handle on all the features. I also managed to figure out how to remove the personal information, so I will check each picture for that info and delete it when I find it. I will also make copies as instructed so that should not be an issue any longer.

And yes, I will learn how to use masks, it will make the work much easier. I'll try the technique that I think Margie (?) posted, about pasting the older wip over the last one to try to fix the walls.

Thanks to all for all the tips!

[pic-dr]

OK, here's the latest version with the walls re-done. I did not paint anywhere on this wip, used only the clone brush and the spot fixer. I admit I have a hard time resisting the urge to fix the imperfections in the original pics, but I'm suppressing it.  :-\  I'll await suggestions.

[schen]

Looks good!

[pic-dr]

Looks good!

Thanks schen, and thank you for your assistance! :) I sent the pic to Photoshelter for Bambi to look at--I hope I did that correctly--and will look forward to the next pic to fix  :up: