Another School Group

[jaytrumpet]

Hi,

Hoping for more constructive comments. As with my last school group photo (could be a drama club?) I am unhappy with the way the curtains came out. This one was difficult because so many of the faces were marred. When you are trying to fix such small faces the photo becomes (for those sections) essentially low resolution. You can zoom way in but there is just not the pixel information you need do make a lean restoration.

Jay

[Mhayes]

Jay, this is almost a non-restore, but still any improvement is better than none at all. I think the reason you don't like your curtains is that they look all the same in the way they repeat and I don't know if it is the highlights in the center of each curtain, but it gives it a bowed out appearance. I would be tempted on some of the folds to blur a little so they are quite so sharp.

I applaud you for attempting this one as it is a real mess. I took it and did a Level Adjustment first, then a simple auto Curves. I then looked at the Channels and decided I liked the Green the best. While in the green channel, I did a Ctrl A for all and then a Ctrl C to copy. I then clicked back on the RGB channel and went back into layers and did a Ctrl V to paste the green channel on top. For mode I picked luminosity.  I could get a better look at the boys in the back on your right hand side. They seem to be the most problem on restoring.

There is still damage and green on the face of the boy sitting on your far left. I hate to fault any of your work as there is only so much you can do on a photo that has such serious damage.

Thanks for taking this one one!

Margie

[jaytrumpet]

Thanks Margie,

I did a little more work on it, tried to clean up some of the faces and work on the curtains in back. Can't say I'm happy with the results though the little boy, front left is improved.

I'm not really sure I follow the procedure you outlined in your second paragraph. Will have to go through it slowly, see if I understand what you are doing and replicate it.

You mention that this one is "almost a non-restore" what exactly do you mena by that?

Jay

[Mhayes]

Jay,

This is better.

The procedure I used is one that Kiska has posted on the Forum before and I will try to find it. Since I changed from IE to Firefox I have lost some of my book marks. The only reason I mentioned it was that was I did it to get more details.

Look at the three boys on the end on the original and you will notice the differences between yours---small little details like the hair on the second boy from the end on your right.

The curtains are a small thing since it is the kids that are most important, but it might help not to  have them so uniform like blinds. If you look at the original in the center you will see soft folds that don't go straight down.

I shouldn't have said this was almost a non-restore as you have really made progress. All of these school photos for this family have so much damage and distortion. There is one still left in Jonas' Gallery that comes the closes to be a non-restore because of missing details.

Margie

[jaytrumpet]

Margie,

I look forward to seeing that tip posted by Kiska.

Here is another stab at it. I worked on the three boys in the upper right. It is more like the original photo but it still has lots of problems. Poor kind on the far right barely has any face to work with! Also worked on the curtains a bit.

Jay