Hi,
I'm new to RTP--been lurking for about 3 weeks. I have PSE3, as you can probably tell by my screenname :glasses: My father was diagnosed with Alzheimers about 3 months ago, and my brothers and I are making a slideshow for him and my mom for their 43rd anniv. next month. I have this picture of my gf--whom I never met--from about the 1920s I'd say. I've done some level adjustment on it, even split the photo into layers and ran level adjustments on him and the background separately. Just not getting what I want. I know much of the photo is way over exposed--to the point of being blown. Just wanted to see if anyone had any further ideas of what I could do to improve the photo. Remember, I'm in PSE3--I have Richard's book/cd/tools, but haven't yet used them as I am still trying to master the basics of the program. Thanks! Oh yeah, the second thumbnail is what I got after working on the layers separately. I ran the image through neatimage (thanks for that wonderful link to the program Flora!) but for this image I was not happy with the results--I lost too much detail in his face. But the background is soooooooo noisy.

Jen

I'm using PSE2 and I had a try at your picture. Here's what I did - I'm lazy :lmao:

Image > Adjustments > Equialize (that made it look awful, but wait...)

Enhancements > Adjust Color > Color variations .... (here I played with more and less of the red, green and blue in each of the midtones, highlights, and shadows until I couldn't do any more there, then I adjusted the Saturation (all in the same dialog) There is also a slider for color intensity, but I didn't touch that.

Might still need some refining, but saves a lot of work.

HTH Margaret

Hi Jen, had a quick play with your picture. Going out shortly, so if interested will post method tomorrow.

I'd love it if you shared your method. Thanks to you and Margaret for taking a go at my photo. I tried again this afternoon and improved the photo a bit, but he still looks like he's been painted on the scene. I think it must be because the white background is just so overexposed. I got results similar to yours, Gary, but yours is a bit less noisy. Thanks again!

Hello Jen,

Took a shot at this one. Played with channels mixing in RGB and CMYK. Reduced the shadow under the brim and returned to sepia color or something akin and sharpened. Didn't play with the noise to much. If you have neat image, it sounds ike you have the ability to de-noise as you desire, so hope this was useful.

Sean

thank you for asking and for letting us all work on your picture

Hi Jen,

You're right that background is very dirty. I don't think neat image is a big help here though. Because the background is so overexposed I think you are just seeing a lot of staining on the paper (which unfortunately seem to be consistent across all channels)

I have PS7, so not sure what features aren't available in PSE.

I set levels for the image, but then modified curves for the dapper gent, and the background seperately as seperate adjustment layers.

I also pulled saturation down a bit.

I think the key to how dirty the background looks is contrast - I notice that Gary's version has quite low contrast so looks less messy (he may have done something else clever too!). I think you need to keep the contract in the background fairly low - and accept that it will look a bit underexposed. You will probably just need to do some hand retouching too - which will be a big job with out the nifty heal tool for Photoshop 7.

I did some very light unsharp mask - not sure if it helped though...

Finally I ran it through Neatimage at the end just to get rid of a little bit of grain - but pulled the noise reduction down to the minimum I could.

Hope this is of some help. What an dapper looking gent!

*EDIT* Sean - really like what you've done there - taking the shading off the face is a big improvement.

Hi Jen,

Got a bit of spare time now.

Well, I did'nt do too much really.

First I selected the man, and copied and pasted hin to a new layer. He seemed fairly well exposed so did'nt want to change him too much when I ran levels.
(I could of just masked him, but you are using Elements, so I was'nt sure if you had use of layer masks.)(Just looked at Elements, and as long as you use a levels adjustment layer you do have a mask.)

Anyway, I ran a levels adjustment on the background to darken it. Had to reduce the whites a little to prevents them blowing out. (This is what caused most of the noise.)

Created a new layer, set blend mode to Soft Light and filled with 50% grey.
(Do this by clicking on arrow at top of Layers Pallette, select New Layer, then click options as required.) Now using a soft brush, set to about 5% opacity, I painted in black or white, to darken or lighten areas such as the man's suit and the foliage by the wall.

Flattened image and cloned out any blemishes I did'nt want.

Lastly I ran it through Neat Image. (Default settings are far too strong, and I reduced them greatly.)

Still not really happy with the image, if I have a bit of time today, will try to improve it a touch, will post if I do.

Hope this helps.

Had another play with your picture, not sure if this improves it or not.

Desaturated image and added colour layer, reduced opacity of layer. (I think this gives it a sepia tint closer to the original.

Noticed most of noise was in sky and far pillar. So first copied near pillar and pasted and resized to fit over far pillar. Flattened image, then copied to new layer. Applied Gaussian Blur to new layer and masked to apply only to sky. Reduced layer opacity for best effect.

Applied Curves layer to darken mid tones a little, and brighten highlights.

Thanks Caitlin,

I'm trying hard, and I really enjoy being forced to look at and assess the various channels and saturations, and then try my hand at improving them. I am learning with every response from you, Gary and others and very grateful to those who upload their personal picures for us all to work on, and those who provide the detailed break down of their efforts - I have to learn how to do that properly :-)

Great site and group.

Hope you are getting what you want Jen ?

Sean

Sean et al,
Absolutely!!! I am learning from each new post. I just had the chance to sit down at the computer--we spent the last couple of days doing yard work. Looks like I've got poison ivy again <ugh> Had my first case last year--it was a doozy--took 2 treatments of steroids to keep me sane from all the itching. I'm hoping this won't be as bad. Course, it may mean more time for playing with my old photos ;)

Again, my appreciation to all who have worked on my grandfather's photo and shared the steps in your process! You are all great!

Jen

My attempt. I like keeping as much of the photo as I can in old pics, so I didn't crop.

k

Looks great!!! Please share what you did--especially to get rid of the shadow of the lightpole on the left. I dealt with it by cropping it out. Your photo looks great. I'd love to have a go using your method. Please share if you have the time.

Jen

Jen,

I just went back to look at my Layers Palette to see what I did and not all it is there. I must not have saved everything when I made a jpeg for posting. That said here is the best I can reconstruct:

1. Duplicated the Background Layer
2. Levels Adjustment Layer
3. Channel Mixer Adj. Layer-checked monochrome and set RGB to 10/32/66
4. Curves Adj. Layer and tweeked the contrast a bit
5. Made an empty Layer-(Layer>New Layer) - and set to oftlight blend
and painted with a 10-20 black and white soft brushes, especially the
shadow created by the hat. Also painted other areas of the pic to bring
up detail.
6. Also made an Empty layer set to Color Burn, but this did'nt help too much.
7. Merged Visible
8. Applied Dust & Scratches filter and Neat Image set to 35%.
9. For the foreground grass area, I just copied good grass, pasted it in and
used the Healing brush to blend.
10. I used an Empty Layer set to Softlight blend to work on the shadow.
I may have made a selection of the shadow and used a Levels Adj. to
reduce the shadow.
11. From the Merged Visible layer I copied the window to the left of his
head and pasted over the shadowed window and used Clone Stamp
and the healing brush to blend the edges.
12. I cropped out the ragged border of the pic.
13. I think I added another Empty layer set to Softlight and worked over
the pic again with black and white brushes with 10-30% opacity.
14. I think the USM was 226/.9/5???

Oh, the black spot I used Clone Stamp and one of the Softlight layers.

I think the image of grandfather looks pretty good. I did the best I could with the background and porch area.

K

Jen,

I just went back to look at my Layers Palette to see what I did and not all it is there. I must not have saved everything when I made a jpeg for posting. That said here is the best I can reconstruct:

1. Duplicated the Background Layer
2. Levels Adjustment Layer
3. Channel Mixer Adj. Layer-checked monochrome and set RGB to 10/32/66
4. Curves Adj. Layer and tweeked the contrast a bit
5. Made an empty Layer-(Layer>New Layer) - and set to Softlight blend
and painted with a 10-20% opacity black and white soft brushes, especially the shadow created by the hat. Also painted other areas
of the pic to bringup detail.
6. Also made an Empty layer set to Color Burn, but this did'nt help too much.
7. Merged Visible
8. Applied Dust & Scratches filter and Neat Image set to 35%.
9. For the foreground grass area, I just copied good grass, pasted it in and
used the Healing brush to blend.
10. I used an Empty Layer set to Softlight blend to work on the shadow.
I may have made a selection of the shadow and used a Levels Adj. to
reduce the shadow.
11. From the Merged Visible layer I copied the window to the left of his
head and pasted over the shadowed window and used Clone Stamp
and the healing brush to blend the edges.
12. I cropped out the ragged border of the pic.
13. I think I added another Empty layer set to Softlight and worked over
the pic again with black and white brushes with 10-30% opacity.
14. I think the USM was 226/.9/5???

Oh, the black spot I used Clone Stamp and one of the Softlight layers.

I think the image of grandfather looks pretty good. I did the best I could with the background and porch area.

K

well, as of today anyway. I took the original and cropped out the lightpost shadow. Did a little with the healing brush. Selected out ol' granddad and duplicated him into 4 layers--two with him selected and two with the background selected. I then ran a layer adjustment on each--levels and brightness/contrast. Merged layers. Ran unsharp mask on the whole. Selected background and ran noise>median (I think, might have been reduce noise). Photo was a little more sepia than I liked, so reduced saturation a bit. I think that's it. I tried to go back to my PSD saved file after I closed editor, but it did not show my history...I thought if you saved in psd you would be able to go back and review/change that? Anyway--that's my final as of today--I think I should have feathered my selection of him a bit, but forgot. Thanks everyone for their help! Between you all and PSE 3: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage I am learning heaps! Can't wait to load Richard's tools and really get things going!

Comments?

Here is my amatuer attempt at this image.

You can see that its the grandfathers right side that is faded. So my intent was to isolate that, adjust it and then blend it back into the rest of the photo.

Flora's easy selection tutorial made some task very quick and well...easy.http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=120

Getting at the point in her tutorial where she says to adjust the curves to cause the image to loote like a matte. I did so. I then painted all that was not related to the grandfather white. Then Control clicked the extra channel as she instructs. I then narrowed the focus of the slection to just the mans right side.

I ran into problems when using adjustment layers on this selection as it still affect the entire layer inaddition to my selection. So I just did a quick copy and past to another layer above. Bagan to use and adjument layer to adjust curves and it did affect the selection portion but it also affect the transparent section to then cause the layer below to be affect. "Use all layers was NOT selected". Hmmm, whatever. But I got around it eventually. I did a rather poor jop of cloning the moss/grass and did a mjor amateur job of mirroring the plant and then also creating a fake shadow from the plant shape.

Im not exactly sure but I think those are windows behind him. I mean its a house isn't it LOL. Well that one window that flass right into the dark strip proved to be a majpor problem So I just copied the window off his left, adjust its shape via the distort command.

I also felt that the concrete/stone/marble whatever it is was rrather blown out looking on the original so I used the sandtone texturizer filter. The posted image being a jpeg it was hard to tell what was supposed to be and what was dirt so I didn't mess with retouching stuff off to the righ of the photograph.

Given that it was obviously a very sunny day. I'm almost inclined to think that some of what has been precived as "fade" is perhaps actually a light "shimmer" on the suit. But then would he likely be wearing a wool suit back in those days? I suppose so.

Thoughts?

BTW, is the speia tone an intentional style "back in the day" or is it the result exposure to light and the aging of the inks?

Pete

Seems the image I posted above is still not where it should be. His right side is definately lighter than his hat for example. But I still think its leaps and bounds better than the original photo. Interms of composition, I like the idea many have had to crop out the image from just behind the grandfather. Not
to mention making the retouching easier. HOwever, I would guess if you were getting paid, you'd want to find out if doing such a major crpping iut would be acceptable to the customer. I like the cropping out because it still keeps the grandfather as the focus of the photograph while not being in the center.
Pete