Betty's Workshop2 My first moderate image.

[happyheart]

I asked Rebecca for a harder image, and she sent me this....I certainly got my wish!  The saving grace for this image was that the faces were relatively undamaged.  I reconstructed the ear on the gentleman, and borowed a hand from a picture of my husband.  I used a couple of techniques described in Dan Margulis's book and Katrin Eismann's book for creating masks of the damaged areas, so that I could clone from the good areas without infringing on the still good areas.  Then I blended the two areas together.  I'm not totally happy with the woman's arms, but they were about as smooth as I could get them. 

Before:

[happyheart]

After:

[KaDi]

I hope you won't mind a little constructive criticism on your work. This image is difficult because of the amount of spotting. I think, however, that the dress should be a smooth blue--it looks like a typical 80's dress with a slight sheen but the color would have been rather consistent.

Also, I have to say, the hand doesn't belong. I think you might have read some of the water damage as "hand" perhaps...but I don't think it was in the image at all. It seems out of place to me.

Nonetheless, you have brought the light back to their faces.

[happyheart]

Thanks for the comments.  I too wanted the dress smoother.  I used a mask to select the damage, so that I could clone over the damage only.   That way I didn't have a flat color with no shadows (folds).  I tried to use a color fill layer to even it out but I still had the darker spots.  I even used a Gaussian Blur to soften the dress.  Any ideas for how to even it out?

I substituted the hand from another photo, as it seemed that it would be on his knee.  That area is totally gone on the original.  What would you suggest I do instead?  Should I just make it the dark color of the suit?

I'm also not totally satisfied with the woman's arms.  I used skin from her throat area to fill them in and smooth out the water damage with healing tool, but now they look blurry to me.  Ideas??

[pcraft]

Hi Betty..  I'm not sure what I'd have done with the dress but, I would have just used the clone tool on the ladies arms.. It looks to me that there's enough good pixels to do the job...  Otherwise, you're doing a fine fine job...   :)

[happyheart]

OK...here's a second try at this.  :)  I removed the hand and just made it part of the suit.  I softened the skin areas a little more, so the pores weren't so prevalent, added a lighter blue color fill layer using Lighten blend mode on the dress, and I used long strokes of the healing brush to blend the dress more.  I like it better.  Comments?? ???

[downtownbrown374]

Maybe try going in and burning in some shadows/creases into the woman's dress so it won't seem flat.

[Mark Wilson]

Hi Happyheart,

I agree with adding fold and shadow detail to the dress, but remove the remaing blotches first. Then go back to your original image and, using the marquee tool (or pen tool if you prefer) with an approprately soft edge, select the areas that need to be shaded. Select a shadow colour from the original dress and begin airbrushing into your selections using a large soft brush. Some of the folds will be darker or sharper edged, so adjust your shadow colour and selection softness as required.

For the arms, I would again start by selecting the entire arm. Then add 3 or 4 skin colours from the original face to your palette. Fill the area with the mid skin colour and then airbrush, a little at a time, the shadows. Once the shading is right you can add a little noise or grain to match the rest of the image or a bit of skin texture at reduced opacity from another image. If you do it well it will turn out far better than cloning the facial skin.

-Mark.

[paula]

Happyheart kindly gave me permission to post this. This is by no means a quality job because it is just to flat and "cakey" but I was intrigued by the problem of the dress and the arms and wanted to give it a try.   This is what I did.

On a duplicate layer I did some cloning and copy/pasting to even out the color in the dress and the arms. I looked at the areas that I wanted to fix very carefully, trying  to figure out where the light and shadows should be replaced.    I used a soft airbrush tool at 20 opacity and picked up colors as I went along and tried to brush the light and shadow in.   
I also did a tiny bit of airbrushing on her face because I don't think the blotches are all freckles.  I took a few of the most unlikely ones out. like the one on her lip.

[Dave]

yeah this one is quite challanging I think, you have done well though :)

[happyheart]

Wow, Paula, Thanks!  Great job on the arms.  And I like the dress much better also!  I'll send an email to Rebecca and tell her to hold the jpg I sent her before and will try this one more time.  This shows me it can be done, I just need to work a little more!  (If I can't get it right, may I give you a yell?) :up:

[pixeldrift]

I'm new here, but not to restoration.  What's the policy on cropping?  It seems to me if something is really challenging you (the hand issue for example), it wouldn't be bad to leave it out and focus on what's important... ie the faces.  The problem with the womans shirt seems to need a lot of manual painting.  Good luck!

[happyheart]

OK, thanks to all of you for your recommendations.  Because of them, I have a much better finished photo (at least I think so  :loveit:)  I reworked the dress totally, by adding a lot of hand painting using the airbrush as suggested.  I smoothed out the arms with several layers of color fills and blend modes to get the color more even, patched the tie a little more, and removed anything that wasn't obviously a freckle!   I always do a test print, and based on that I actually added a few additional highlights to the draping on the dress.  Without them the print looked totally flat, but my printer is only and HP 8450.  I sent both a highlighted and non-highlighted version to Rebecca, so they could choose which was best on their printers.  I wanted to post the finished photo so all who care can see it.  Thank you all again

Betty

[John]

I think you did a fantastic job.  Considering the condition of the original, I say A+!

One thing I noticed however was a little blotch in the very lower right hand corner... is that supposed to be there?  It's right above her wrist.

John

[happyheart]

Yes, actually it is supposed to be there.  In the original larger version, it is the Olan Mills studio signature!  ;D