Second Image - to crop or not?

[capriccio]

Original


Uncropped, restored as much as possible leaving some damage:


Cropped to same dimensions/PPI as original:


I drew the bottom half of the man's jacked from scratch and added highlights, shadows and noise to jacket and shirt to fit in. Used lots of healing brush, but used samples of present noise since the original looked like a snapshot with original noise (not due to water damage).

Which would you prefer - cropped or not? And if not, is there anyone who wants to try filling in the rest of the uncropped version??? :)

[Jill B]

Great job!!!  I sure wouldn't want to try and fill in at the sides.  Where to begin?? I'm wondering if we can submit two versions and let the family decide ( cropped and left as is with damage at sides where it's impossible to fix).  Maybe we could get an answer on that possibility?  I also wonder if the man didn't have his arm bent originally and his hand on hip. It does look like his jacket is just starting to drape back before all the damage (if that makes sense?), but the bend in the jacket now looks a tad unrealistic but I realize it's a guess with all that damage. The top edge of arm of jacket could be smoothed a bit but overall, I'd say an astounding job!  Definitely not criticizing, it's great work on a difficult pic.   Jill

[pcraft]

Great job to this point Capriccio, crop and all...  I'm sure the ownners will be impressed...   :) Jill, does have a valid point about the way the jacket drapes back, don't you think?  I think I'd try relaxing that out a bit rather than try bending the arm.. I think also, I'd taper his sleeve just a bit towards the edge of the crop...  As with Jill, I'm not meaning to criticizie, I think you've done great work with what you have done..   :)

[pixeldrift]

It would be really nice if the photo owners could make a brief note about anything they can recall from the image, especially if they remember the pose a person was in or what might have been under the damaged area, just to give some hint.  Like in this case, was his arm bent on his hip or not?

[Dave]

Nice job Capricio!

A couple of points on some of the observations in a couple of the replies and let me say I'm not being critical of anyone's ideas just pointing out realities.

Since money is scarce, providing two prints of the same photo would be very draining on our limited resources. We also don't have the ability to let the image owners decide which version to print via the web or email (something we may be able to address in the future). But I like the sentiment. I'm all about providing the best quality possible.

As far as having the image owners provide information on each image, that's a great idea, but hard to do. During our New Orleans trip, Monday, the first day was a busy day. We had 43 families come in with images. There was barely any time to sit down. Each day, the volume of people seeking our services increased dramatically. On Friday, the last and shortest work day, we had 133 families.

Basically, during the copy work phase there usually isn't enough time to get to specific about the images. Most of our "customers" focus on telling us about what they're going through or about the memories behind the images.

Both of these suggestions are good ideas and ones that need to be considered down the road. Keep the ideas coming people.

Dave