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Grandma (?) and little boy

Started by karen11554, September 21, 2021, 05:46:14 PM

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karen11554

Hello everyone! It is certainly good to be back at work on restoration projects! Below is the image I chose. I have not made too much progress so far, and since it's been a while, I have a few questions! Do I make the photo black and white or leave it as sepia? I took off the "frame" since it was only visible on the top and right side, correct? Also, I can't tell for sure but it looks like there may have been some writing in blue ink right above the figures? Thanks for any help!





Lynnya

Hi Karan and Welcome!  Lovely photo, it'll be fun.  Did you crop the photo? I think that's a no no..it needs to stay the same exact size. I haven't looked at it in the blue channel but I think the blue writing will disappear using that channel.  If it were me I'd do a black and white and also a sepia for quality control to choose.  If you use the blue channel it will be black and white.. others may have more input to help you. The final needs to be saved as sRGB color space. Hope this helps and enjoy!
never giving up......learning from others as I go...

Jo Ann Snover

Taking the last question, there is some blue writing, but it's extremely faint. I added a couple of layers to super-saturate the blues and increase the contrast and it's still very, very faint. I'd guess it was a transfer from the back of another print that was on top of this one when it got wet. So I'd just get rid of it as damage

As far as the tones, I think the advice is to send back both (and you can add a black & white adjustment layer on top of your working layers to produce a monochrome version easily.

I'll leave the frame question for someone else as I'm not sure.
Jo Ann

Mhayes

Hi Karen,

Welcome to OPR, we are happy to have you join us. We want this to be fun and don't feel frustrated when you have to do some things over again. That is the great thing about the Forum as you can get pointers on how to improve your photo. So here goes.

As Lynnya pointed out, cropping without asking your distributor is a no-no. Reason being, that while you kept the photo to the size on the extension, you cropped to get rid of the border. While it might have been better for the border to be cropped, you have the option of extending the background or recreating the border. Sometimes it is nice as you have a reference point for white as in a border. Before the photos are ready to print they go to Quality Control and the restored photo will be compared to the original and that is where an additional crop will show.

Except for very old photos that were meant to be sepia, most all are B/W. The sepia tone you are seeing is from flood waters and age. You will want to have it as a B/W. Within the same color space of RGB that you are in, and if you are using PhotoShop there is a neat job for that. The 1st thing I would do is a color correction and on this one I did a quick Curves Auto Adjustment, merged visible and chose Adjustments again and this time the B/W icon. See examples.









I regret now the border was left in, so I cheated and put the border back in. You may use if you like. When the family gets this back it will be printed on a the closest standard size which will be a 4-6--so my border will blend into the background.



"carpe diem"

Margie Hayes
OPR President
[email protected]

karen11554

Thanks for all the great suggestions-I ended up downloading Margie's suggested image and working from that. I'm just questioning the texture of the sky?



Jo Ann Snover

I agree that the sky texture is a little too blotchy in places. You could use the healing brush from a smoother area of the sky on the rougher area and just transfer texture. Be sure to avoid any detail areas when sampling or you'll get some nasty artifacts!

But I think there's a bigger issue in the detail areas of the image. It looks as if it has been drastically sharpened. Lots of halo areas around very hard edges. Did you sharpen it, or run a filter on it that might have included sharpening? You might want to look at your layers and see where those hard edges originated. If you look at the original with just a black and white adjustment layer over it, it doesn't have that jaggy harshness. View the image at 200% if you're having trouble seeing it, and flip back and forth between original and your work in progress. Things tend to jump out when you can compare that way.
Jo Ann

Mhayes

Nothing to add to what Jo Ann has said, especially about sharpening. If a photo needs it, QC will add and the reason we don't want the volunteers to do it is that we can't reverse what you have done.
"carpe diem"

Margie Hayes
OPR President
[email protected]