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Glenna's Latest Challenge

Started by glennab, October 10, 2006, 08:25:43 AM

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glennab

Hi Volunteers

I'm far from finished with this one, but I'd really appreciate feedback.  I'm concerned about the woman's face, because it still seems to look contrived after 3 tries.  The majority of the white spots you see are scrapes, not discolorations,  There's nothing there but white.  I've tried some dodging and burning, and still need to do more, but at this point I'd like to know if anyone has any suggestions as to how to speed up the process.  Also, my perception is that the lighter area at the right is from sunlight coming through a window.  Is that feasable? Help, please!!!

GG
Original


Restoration so far:
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

Ausimax

Hi Glenna,

The woman's face doesn't look bad to me, perhaps a little flat on her right side, and there is a spot on the man's face( Light Suit) just at mouth level, might be worth a bit of a burn.

The white spots look like a lot of cloning coming up, the other thing to try is on the woman's dress, if there is not too much detail visible, you could select a patch lower on the shirt and paste it into the damaged area, I often find that works better than cloning, I copy a patch then just keep pasting it, then I juggle all the bits around till I achieve the result I'm after, and then merge all those layers into the working layer.

I also do this on faces, it keeps the texture better than cloning, and if you use an adjustment layer on each patch you can blend the colour in fairly close with curves or levels and finish off with the healing brush.

You could be right about the lighter area at the right being light through the curtains, you can see a little of the same effect on the curtains on the left, I would tend to leave it as is, the shape and effect seem too regular to be damage.

Otherwise you are going like a house on fire, keep up the good work.

Max

Wisdom is having a well considered opinion .... and being smart enough to keep it to yourself!     MJS

"Life" is what happens while you are planning other things!

glennab

Hi Max

Thanks for all your suggestions!  I've used the "patching" method on some of the image already, especially the drapes on the left.  One thing I forgot to mention is that this photo was printed on a textured paper, so I'm also trying to retain some of that look as well as cleaning up the image.   It's a really tough one, but I'm learning a lot, and it'll make me so happy when I can return it to the owners.  I've put a lot of time and love into this one! C'mon the rest of you pros, help me out on this one.  Max has given me a good start.

Later!

GG
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

Kenny

Hi Glenna.

On the faces...maybe just take the highlights down a tad. Knock the shine down, so to speak. The faces look fantastic, just a  little too bright in the highlights.

Those white spots are a pain for sure. The best way to fix them I've found is to use the healing brush set on a small soft brush on a new layer. Very tedious, but the results are worth it.

I'm not sure about that area on the right of the image being sunlight. To me it looks like that part of the picture was exposed to strong sunlight and bleached out somewhat. If you look, there is a definite line there. It might even be plausible to just crop that out.

It looks really good though, you've brought the colors back wonderfully!


Kenny :)


But why is the rum gone?

glennab

Hi Kenny

You're right, the faces have too much highlight.  I fixed the gentleman on the right this evening, and he looks much better.  One down, two to go -- and two bazillion flowers!

I'll try the healing brush, as you suggested.  I haven't had a lot of luck with it so far, but I suspect it's because I haven't mastered the technique yet.  Am gonna work on that!

Thanks so much for your feedback.  Both yours and Max's has been extremely helpful and has encouraged me more than I can tell you.  I love you guys so much.  You're the greatest!

GG
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

Kenny

Glenna, when I use the healing brush I make the brush just slightly larger than the spots I'm trying to correct. Alt+click near where you're repairing for a sample and then just click right over the spot and it should be gone. Since it samples the pixels around it, it will blend in nicely until you get to an area that's a lot diffrerent than your sample point. Then, just Alt+click again on the new sample point and keep going. Tedious, but effective for removing small spots.


Kenny


But why is the rum gone?

glennab

Kenny -- I'll definitely keep trying the healing brush.  Here's a question for you.  So far the restorations I've worked on have had very few areas with consistent color.  There's mega damage all over.  Is there an advantage to using the healing brush over cloning?

Thanks for your feedback.  It means a lot to me.  In a few more days, I'll probably be posting the updated version of this one, but I want to get a little further first.  I'm finding that in areas like the huge bouquet, it's hard to decide where to just leave out detail, where to clean up the ugly brown spots and where to try to get a little more detail.  Exercise those brain cells!!!

Have a great day.

GG
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

Kenny

#7
Glenna, the healing brush is more forgiving than the cloning tool. The cloning tool repeats the exact sample and the cloning tool uses the sample as a reference point, then samples the area you click, then blends it all together. With the clone tool you have to resample much more often.

One caveat about the healing brush: if you're close to the edge of a different color or shade it will tend to pick it up if you get too close. What I do is either select what I'm working on so it won't sample beyond it or use a mask to keep it from picking up unwanted colors.

I was like you at first. I thought "what's the use of the healing brush, it's the same thing as the cloning tool?". It's similar, but not the same thing. I generally use the healing brush to repair, and the cloning tool to replace. After you clone, you can use the healing brush to blend it in.

I'll try to do a quick video of it if I can. My screen capture program doesn't like to work with photoshop very well, but I'll see what I can come up with  :)


Kenny


*Edit.

I managed to do a quick tutorial about the healing brush vs the clone stamp. It's hosted on YouTube, so it's not very good quality, but if you watch it full screen you can see what I'm attempting to do there :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24NYAyV-qqs


/go easy on me, I know I sound like a hillbilly and it's my first tutorial :P


But why is the rum gone?

glennab

Hi Kenny,

I've been working on my restoration, trying both the clone tool and the healing brush.  I can see that there are advantages to both.  The healing brush has helped a lot with the suit of the gentleman on the right (as we look at them), because there's not a lot of variation in the colors, and it allows me to retain some of the paper texture.  My biggest challenge right now is the areas where there is so much mottled color in different shades.  Sometimes the healing brush works and sometimes it makes things worse.  But I'm figuring it out thanks to your feedback.  Appreciate it!

GG
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

Kenny

Glenna,

When it's bad like that and I have a larg area to fix, sometimes the healing brush doesn't cut it by itself. What I usually do then is use the clone tool and build up the area, then use the healing brush over that to smooth it out and put back texture.


I hope that made sense :P


Kenny


But why is the rum gone?

glennab

Hey Kenny,

That's what I did this evening and I made quite a bit of progress. What I'm concerned about now are two areas, and you'll see them on the image I posted.  First is the woman's sleeve.  It appears to be a lace, or net or something transparent.  And the man on our left -- his suit is a pin-stripe pattern that is a number of different shades where the damage is.  I'm not sure how I'm going to handle either of those.  I did run a layer with dodging and burning, and that helped, but it still looks pretty rough.  Any suggestions?

Thanks for being so willing to analyze this for me.  Your advice is keeping me going, because this is rougher than I realized.  Every 4 or 5 pixels are different shades and patterns, so this will take a while. I need all the encouragement and tips and tricks you guys are willing to extend.

Thanks again and best wishes!

GG
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

Ausimax

Hi Glenna,

You have certainly got yourself a doozy. What is the print size of the photo? Quite often you are looking at minute detail on your monitor of an image that will end up printed 6x4 or 7x5, it sometimes helps to scale it to print size on your monitor and see what detail is really visible, and remember you have been staring for hours at an image that most times is looked at for several seconds.

The image you posted is about 7x5 on my monitor and I can't even make out there is a stripe in the suit, the thing is you may have to loose the stripes, as they are murder to clone in and keep straight, other than that you may have to accept that trying to make it perfect is going to be over-restoring.

With the sleeve what may work is to clone the arm to a skin tone, then on a separate layer over-spray black at a low opacity, then you can change the opacity of the layer till you get the effect you desire.

Sorry I can't be of more help Glenna, with the struggle I have been having with my job, I'm not even sure I should be giving advice, lets put it in  terms of moral support.

Max

Wisdom is having a well considered opinion .... and being smart enough to keep it to yourself!     MJS

"Life" is what happens while you are planning other things!

Kenny

I agree with Max. I can't make out the stripes on my monitor either. The woman's sleeve could be darkened and I think it would look just fine. From the image you posted it look like there is a part of the sleeve on the woman's left arm (our right) that could be used as a sample.



Kenny  :)


But why is the rum gone?

cmpentecost

Hi Glenna,

I'm a bit late coming in on this, but I was out of town at my photography/Photoshop class.

I played a few minutes with your photo, and using a lot of what I learned in my class, I think the majority of this photo could be corrected using curves and the layer masks that go with the curves adjustment layers.  You'll still need to use the clone and healing brush tools, but the 3 faces need very little repair after working with curves.

I'm short on time, but I'll try to give a quick summary of what I tried.

Using the original image, I chose the white and black points using the Threshhold adjustment layer tool.  Move the slider to the far right and gradually move it left, until the first black dot appears, and hold shift and click on this, giving you a black point.  Then, move the slider all the way to the far right, slowly moving it to the left, until the first white spot occurs.  Shift click on this, giving it your white point.  It may take more than a few white or black dots before big enough to give it the black/white point setting.  Now, click cancel.  You just wanted your black and white points.  The purpose of doing this is to remove the color cast.

Next, go to curves, click on the white eye dropper, and then click on your white point marker.  Then, click on the black eye dropper, and click on the black point marker.  Click ok.

Now, you can go into curves and do multiple layers of curves if you need to.  For example, the curtain on the right side of the photo was very faded.  I did a control-click on the faded curtain, and lowered the curve until the curtain looked to be the right color.  The rest of the picture looked horrible, but that's ok.  I clicked "OK".  This leaves you with a layer mask filled with white.  Fill the layer mask with black, switch the paintbrush color to white, and with a soft brush, go over the curtain you just darkened in curves.  This brings back the color you wanted for the curtain, and the rest of the picture remains correct.  If you decide the curtain is too orange, reduce the opacity of the brush, and paint over it.    You can do this with all different areas of the picture, each being a different layer mask.

Vincent Versace was one of the instructors at my course, and he is the king at doing what I attempted to explain above.  He also sells DVD's on this exact process.  You can check out his website at http://www.versacephotography.com/v2/.

I hope this helps!

Christine   :)

glennab

Hi Max, Kenny and Christine.  Thanks for all the input.  I'm about to do another round with the restoration, and I'll try your suggestions.  Max, you're so right.  I have to remind myself to back out of the close-up work and see what truly looks important.  (I keep forgetting about keeping another window open with the image fully visible -- Christine, I think that was something you'd posted earlier. and it's a great way to see what's really happening with the image.)

I'm still working on the people right now, and I see a few details that I think are important (i.e. her dress appears to have an "apron" that's edged with a purple or dark pink.  I've pulled that up, as well as the roses, and the rest of the dress is just getting the clone (in large chunks) treatment.  The original photo is 5x7, so there IS lot of detail that will be lost anyway.  (I so hate being a perfectionist.  This is a good lesson in letting go of some of that.)

Christine, thanks for jumping in.  You aren't late. In fact you're just in time, because once I'm through with my people (hopefully soon!), I have to head for the drapes.  I'm definitely going to try the curves and masking technique (I bookmarked Versace's web site, thanks for that reference) on them.

I color-corrected using curves, but I had pure white and back points that were easily discernable, so I used those rather than threshold (I realize that's the most accurate way to get color casts, but because the photos are color adjusted before printing, I wasn't overly concerned about that part of it being perfect  -- how's that for being inconsistent!).

I have a fuzz-butt sitting on my arm right now, so this is going to get slow!  Furry impediments!  Good thing I love them.

Anyway, you've all given me much information with which to work, and your input means more to me than I can express. Thanks!

Enjoy what's left of the weekend!

GG



What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)