Hi All,

I haven't been around in a year and I wasn't a big poster before that so most of you won't know me, but I hope you'll help anyway.

Ok long story short. I've been working as a Notary and I went to this sweet, gentle old lady's house to sign some papers and up on the wall were tons of pictures of her and her descendants all the people reoccured several times except one -- I only saw one of this particular girl and the picture was sun faded or somehow altered the colors. I asker her about the picture and she said it was her daughter who had died from cancer. Now I knew why there was only one picture of her. Any way I offered to take the picture home and see if I could restore it for her. No charge to her just to see if I could do it. Well I hate to say I've been away from photoshop so long that I am a bit out of my depth here. I'm attaching the orignal scan and the adjustments I've been able to make but it's not good enough. her forehead is all washed out and I don't know where to go from here... so please help me. What am I missing. I didn't do anything fancy here just added a few adjustment layers in levels, curves and hue/sat.

http://othelaproperties.com/mrstomeydaughter.jpg
http://othelaproperties.com/mrstomeydaughter_adjusted.jpg

The banding just showed up in the jpg versions of this pic but isn't in my psd version.

So here I sit awaiting the brilliance of y'all.

Thanks in advance

Diane (the pixeltickler)

I must admit, I am not into restoration at all, but had to have a go at this one.

Here is mine, it's very basic, but will maybe help you.

What I did:

Adjusted the colors by using curves, using the neutral color picker somewhere in the background of the image.
Used a multiply layer to bring back the contrast to the picture.
And finally used a masked screen layer to lighten up the hair.

Maybe you like it that way but others can do better for sure!

Patrick

Thank you Patrick. You got much better tone in the face than I did. What do your numbers look like on your adjustment layers? Oh and for anyone else that wants to give this a whack, per her mother that shirt is yellow.

Thanks to all who assist. The gods will bless you in their own way!
Diane (the pixeltickler)

I made the assumption that the band around the picture was the actual tone and that the rest of the picture had a cyan cast. Basically, I applied a filter which was the opposite of cyan and adjusted. Added a bit of my own color to the eyes, not sure what the originals were like.

Cheers
Dave

Thanks Dave,

Nope I think that outer band is supposed to be white. And her mom said her eyes were hazel. But awsome anyway.

Diane

Here I just set the black and white points on a curves adjustment. There was still a slight cyan cast so I raised red channel brightness to compensate.

Hi Diane, Had to have a go with this one.

Hi everybody,

Diane,

I also had to have a go ...
What realaqu said about having friends like you ...

I tried to change as little as possible to keep the picture as this Lady has seen it and got used to all this time .... I have removed the white border ... but it would be no problem at all to 'put it back' ....

Take care

Heph, Realaqu, Gary and Flora,

:pleased:

You guys ar all awe inspiring to me! Thank you so much for your takes.

Heph I did that too except the part about removing the Cyan cast with the red channel boost; how does one do that exactly?

Realaqu, Gary Flora! WOW!!! but a little description on what you did would help me recreate it, pretty pleaaaasssse.

Flora how did you get such amazing skin tone specifically. And her hair is perfect what did you do? I repeat you are amazing, but I wanna learn to :bow:

Gary you got the background and around the edge perfect. what did you do? I don't see and of the odd colour anomalies I was having. Teach me oh sage ones.

Thank you all so much for your help! I am truly humbled when I come here.

Diane

Inspired by Floria's amazing work

I started this project from the very begining, somebody could give me a hand to improve my work. thanks

realaqu

Hi Diane,

Didn't do too much. Did a rectangular selection on the good area. Select/Inverse
to change selection to border area.

Now did a levels adj to even out tone. This caused some discolouration in some areas. So created a new layer, using clone tool set to colour, cloned out discoloured areas using colour from good areas (had to adjust Opacity of clone tool to get reasonable blend). Clone tool to normal, and cloned out areas that still showed.

Flattened image, then used a levels adj layer to colour correct and improve contrast.

Lastly, created new layer. set blend mode to colour, and coloured skin a little with a tone taken from one of Bruce Beard's charts. Adjusted layer Opacity for effect.

Ditto hair.

Evened out background colour in similar manner.

Hope this helps.


Realaqu, there's no improvement needed on your image, really good work.

Hello Diane,

My heart goes out for the young lady and her mother. She inspired me to feel for her. I worked on the full res image and it is still on my HD, in case you need it.

Started with FFT to get rid of the pattern. Adjusted Levels and curves in 16bit. Made tons of local adjustments, lots of layers and layer masks too numerous to mention.

Greetings,

berwin

Hi everybody,

thanks for your kind words!!! :blush: :blush:

Great jobs evryone! :bigthmb: :bigthmb:

This picture had texture, was faded and the colours were 'off' ...

After running it through the FFT filter to remove the texture (here (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=185) you can find ByRo's excellent Tutorial on how to use it and the link to where download it) and enhancing details by balancing shadows/highlights (different ways for doing this are described in this Tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=65)) I did the following:


Used the Curves 'Set Grey Point' on the background (my right of the picture) close to the top of her head ... This improved things a lot ... removed the cyan cast and brought back some of the original colour.


After that, I selectively (by this I mean loosely select the part I want to work on with the Lasso Tool) used Levels and Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layers for improving tone and contrast ... and Hue/Saturation, Color Balance and Selective Colors Adjustment Layers for correcting and enhancing the colours .... skin included...


Hue/Saturation on her eyes ...


All the corrections I do, be it for tone and contrast or for colours, I do 'by eye' meaning I move the sliders untils it looks OK ... If Hue/Saturation doesn't satisfy me, I try Selective Colors, Color Balance, Levels or Curves, in other words I try everything until I'm satisfied with what I see on my monitor ... That's why it's sometimes difficult to explain exactly how I got to a particular result .... :o:

Still ... I hope this helps ....

Thanks Gary,

I just feel I should do a better work than this one after watching Flora's job. but just dont have any idea to improve it, it looks ok, but it is not indeed.

realaqu

realaqu,

I think you did a beautiful job! Her skin colour is just great!! :thumbsup:

The couple of things I noticed are too strong contrast/shadows ... because of it you lost most details in her hair ....

The skin in her face is partially too smooth/blurred, lacking texture ...

Her left eye is too dark in comparison with the right one ...

Thank you Flora

That is exactly what I need, everytime I read your post, I always learned soemthing new. I will do it again


realaqu

Everyone seems to like Floras picture but is anyone a little disappointed with Floras instructions?
Hey! We got the starting picture and the finished picture and some rough instructions.
We could work through the steps together and maybe all learn something.

If anyone is interested I’ll start off with an attempt at Step1

(assuming you have downloaded mrstomeydaughter.jpg provided by Pixeltickler)

Step 1 – remove the texture
Download and install FFT from Floras link above.
Using the soft round brush (size 35) paint out the stars as in the attachment with black paint.

You should now have no texture showing on the picture.

OK. Anyone want to attempt step 2?
Don’t forget to post your settings then we can follow.


Ken.

Here's another rendition with the skin tones changed to 8% cyan, 38% magenta, 40% yellow and 0 black.

Cheers
Dave

Hey, hey All,

Ok I got it done to my satisfaction more or less; Thanks to EVERYONE who posted! I mean it. There was a tear :bawling: in this dear lady's eye when I dropped this off this morning. It wasn't perfect, but I was indeed happy with the results. I used suggestions from EVERYONE. Following are the results I got. Bless you all, there is an amazing place in heaven for those that help just because they can.

Diane (the pixeltickler)

:bigthmb: :kisses:

Hi Diane,

Lovely picture, so glad to hear that the lady was pleased with your efforts, that surely makes it all worthwhile.

Glad we could help in some small way.

Gary.

Diane,

what you did is simply great! ... A great restoration and even greater kindness and consideration for the Lady!!!

Dave,

It might be my monitor, but her skin looks a bit too 'yellow/orange' ....

Ken,

nit-picking? .... Ok ... let's do it!

Step 1 – remove the texture
Download and install FFT from Floras link above.
Using the soft round brush (size 35) paint out the stars as in the attachment with black paint.

You should now have no texture showing on the picture. *.... After this I get a greyscale picture .... How do I get the colours back?

*When I run FFT I don't get an image like yours ... and I don't see any stars ... What am I doing wrong?

*Why do I get 'ringing' along the edges? ...

*There are so many 'stars' .... why paint black only six and those six ?

*I followed your instructions, but still have some texture in my picture ... can you explain why?

*After following your explanation my 'original' picture has disappeared ...

Etc. ....

....As you can see, 'detailed explanations' don't come easy ... but hey, how should I know .... I am the one with the disappointing "rough instructions" ...

One last thing ... We could work through the steps together and maybe all learn something. .... and if there were no steps, or, in my opinion, the instructions available were 'rough' ... I learnt by making my own steps ....

Excellent job Diane! I think you've got the original colouring spot on!

Great job, Diane,

That is the reason why I love retouchpro. not just because I got so many great teachers in here and learned a lot from them, but also enjoy staying with those true warm hearted people.

bless your friend

Realaqu

I came in too late on this thread to submit my version. The story touched me deeply. Congratulations, Diane, for the excellent restoration.

Lorraine

Thanks Flora. OK I learnt my lesson. But is seemed like a good idea in this particular thread with a good hi-res picture to work from, and a few contributors who seemed to know what they were doing. I did think about problems like you mentioned but thought I could refer back to byRo’s tutorial for the FFT and then your tutorial for the fading. After that I may have learned from someone else as I get stuck.
The whole point was to try and work through this without your help and make everyone think about the next step.

I am coming here to learn. At the moment my ambition is to equal your work. But I won’t stop there.

One question.
I have posted my picture (which I am fairly happy with) but I had several goes at this. If I repair the picture in CMYK (replacing the damaged cyan channel with the Yellow) then her blouse comes out Pink But if I do it in RGB and repair the damaged Blue channel with Green then her blouse is Yellow. Why the bid difference? And how do you know what is correct?
Duv works in CMYK but got the blouse orange.


Ken.

ken,

rather than replacing the various channels, you might try something like the channel mixer tool and simply adjust each channel in a mix and match fashion.

Craig

ken

I try to practiced with your image, with one color balance layer and one selective color layer. try to remove those green aruond her hair on the mask of selective adjustment layer. the last step is some regular adjustment like contrast and her eyes, teeth etc.

realaqu

Kraellin
Thanks for that suggestion. Its amazing how much there is in photoshop. Replacing a complete channel is a bit drastic and I’ve just had a play with the channel mixer and I can virtually repair the channel. That’s one for the memory Bank. Thanks.

I’ve been playing around quite a lot with these faded photos recently. I was under the impression that if the photo had faded uniformly then a simple colour adjustment would put everything right. But this clearly is not the case. I suppose that the different coloured photo dyes must fade differently.

Looking at this photo the face and the blouse are fairly similar so if you make the face pinkish then it makes sense to me that the blouse could be fairly pinkish.

I remember you mentioned the channel mixer in the ‘Ghostly image’ thread that Deadants posted. That was a great picture I was convinced there was a dog in that picture until Flora decided it was a plant. (I wasn’t an active member then)

I’ve just found this posted by Stroker

“Variation that someone once referred to as 'Interactive Channel Mixer'. Wish I could remember whom I heard this from.

Start a new Layer Set.
Cut and Paste G and B into the Set.
Right-click Set > Layer Set Properties.
Turn off G and B channels.

You can now mix G and B into R in any manner that you want.
Blending modes, Opacity, and any adjustment layers that strike yer fancy.
Why, you can even lower the Opacity of the Set itself.

Takes practice and some fiddling, but it's a fairly solid technique with tweaks galore”


Ken.

Realaqu
No problem play away. I have done this with NO selective areas and No painting (except the mark on her nose and 2 spots of blue in the background)

All I did was replace the yellow channel then adjust with curves

What do you think of the colour?

Ken.

Ken

The color is great, I just thought the picture looks a little bit flat.

realaqu

Realaqu
Yes I know I left the contrast low but I didn’t want to burn out her forehead. I didn’t do that unclipping thing.
I should have done a bit of painting on her hair but I tried to do it without any

Ken.

ken,

Replacing a complete channel is a bit drastic and I’ve just had a play with the channel mixer and I can virtually repair the channel. That’s one for the memory Bank. Thanks.

you're welcome.

i'm a bit of a novice yet, so that tip prolly comes through me from flora :) and i've certainly heard more than once around here that there's always more than one way to do things in photoshop. so, whatever works!

Craig

Ken,

One question.
I have posted my picture (which I am fairly happy with) but I had several goes at this. If I repair the picture in CMYK (replacing the damaged cyan channel with the Yellow) then her blouse comes out Pink But if I do it in RGB and repair the damaged Blue channel with Green then her blouse is Yellow. Why the bid difference? And how do you know what is correct?
Duv works in CMYK but got the blouse orange.What I know about RGB/CMYK colour modes is that:

*Monitors work with RGB which has a wider Gamut and Gamma.

*Printers work with CMYK which is more 'limited' in Gamut and Gamma.

*RGB is Additive.

*CMYK is Subtractive.

From Photoshop help file:

Use the CMYK mode when preparing an image to be printed using process colors. Converting an RGB image into CMYK creates a color separation. If you start with an RGB image, it’s best to edit first in RGB and then convert to CMYK at the end of your process. In RGB mode, you can use the Proof Setup commands to simulate the effects of a CMYK conversion without changing the actual image data. You can also use CMYK mode to work directly with CMYK images scanned or imported from high-end systems.

... and those might be the reasons for the big difference you get when tweaking Channels in these two colour modes ... But my knowledge in this field is very limited ....

I always check and often use these differences at the very beginning of a restoration... but then I always go back to RGB and do all my work there because, beside feeling more comfortable with it, RGB is the only mode where all filters and adjustments are available... so, my experience in working with CMYK is practically nil ....

For your restoration .. superb skin tone and colour ... :thumbsup:
... otherwise, in my opinion, a bit too much red ... particularly in her hair... but there is some red in her eyes and teeth also .... from the original we know that her blouse is yellow .... I agree that the original had a strong cyan cast ... but once removed the cast in RGB, the blouse remained yellow ...

Change the colour of the blouse or any colour in the picture if you wish ... but I wouldn't accept and keep the 'wrong' colour simply because some 'tweaking' got me there... In my attachment the new position and the result I got after only removing the Cyan cast with the Curves' Set Grey Point. (since my previous description I changed the point's position).

As usual, my 'instructions' are simply descriptions of what I did ... and not of what should be done ... as Craig said " there's always more than one way to do things in photoshop. so, whatever works!" ... or whatever you feel comfortable with.

:blush: :blush: :blush:
Thanks to all who lavished me with compliments. I've said it before but I am truly humbled by most of the the folks here. I play with Photoshop because it's addictive and I simply can't help myself; BUT I am a complete novice. Especially compared to some of the whizzes and major talents that float around this site. I thought for a little while several years ago of making this a profression, but I realized that I don't have the knowledge base to be of the quality that I would want to provide. So I will just continue to play.

One question for those that are great with hair...how did/do you make a mask for the hair in the lower left corner of the picture where the background isn't all that far off from the hair in tone. That was the one thing I was unhappy with in my finished version, but I didn't feel like I had time to figure it out.

Diane (the pixeltickler)

I have to say Duv your first rendition was lovely!!! And i was impressed Dave with the colourings of her face, nice work.

Great pictures everyone, i am sure the owner will be so proud!

Hi Elle!

Thanks for your comments. More often than not, when you have extreme color casts, restoring is a bit of a compromise. To me, the important area is the skin tone for portraits. If you can get a yellow shirt as well..good on ya! I'm impressed that you "saw" the skin tones. When you work by the numbers and it turns out visually as well, it's quite gratifying. By the way, have you been busy? Haven't seen quite as many posts from you recently!

Cheers
Dave

flora,

i'm not familiar with the term 'Gamut' as you used it here: *Monitors work with RGB which has a wider Gamut and Gamma.

*Printers work with CMYK which is more 'limited' in Gamut and Gamma. could you explain this term as it's used here, please or direct me to somewhere that does?

Craig

Dave,

To me, the important area is the skin tone for portraits. If you can get a yellow shirt as well..good on ya!
DaveI agree Dave, but to me hair and eyes colours are just as important in portraits ... I don't care if the shirt is yellow or pink as long as I can get it as close as possible to what the original colour was or seems to have been ... and to me this is important as well ... That's the point I was trying to make insisting on the yellow blouse .... nothing more to it ....

Ken,

That was a great picture I was convinced there was a dog in that picture until Flora decided it was a plant. (I wasn’t an active member then) ... English is my third language so I might have understood or interpreted it wrongly ... but, as I see it right now, it hurts like hell ...


Craig,

from Photoshop's help file:

A gamut is the range of colors that a color system can display or print.

A color that can be displayed in RGB may be out of gamut, and therefore unprintable, for your CMYK setting. (this happens because RGB has a wider 'gamut' than CMYK)

Photoshop automatically brings all colors into gamut when you convert an RGB image to CMYK. But you might want to identify the out-of-gamut colors in an image or correct them manually before converting to CMYK. And another description:

RGB Monitors and CMYK output files:
Both the Gamut and Gamma of a monitor exceed that of the printed page. That is to say that a monitor can display more colors and a broader range of tones than it is possible to print with ink on paper.

When a file is converted from RGB to CMYK these colors must be adjusted to be within the range of printable colors and the Black channel must be created.

These complex transformations must be done in a manner that precisely matches the profile of the output device. And once you have separated out the black and limited the gamut by converting to CMYK you cannot convert back to RGB without seriously degrading the color and quality of the image.

Hope this helps ...

flora,

thank you :)

that actually helps possibly explain a problem i was having with my printer. normally, the printer prints almost anything in true color and near photo quality, but if the print has a LOT of blue, particularly a lot of hues of blue, the printer cant seem to handle it and the blues come out quite a bit darker with much poorer color separation and identification. this could be the reason why.

Craig

It is unfortunate when you loose a loved one at an early age. After I edited the picture irealized it was originally posted more than two years ago.

Dave,

I agree Dave, but to me hair and eyes colours are just as important in portraits ... I don't care if the shirt is yellow or pink as long as I can get it as close as possible to what the original colour was or seems to have been ... and to me this is important as well ... That's the point I was trying to make insisting on the yellow blouse .... nothing more to it ....


Flora, I absolutely agree with you but in the absence of information..her eyes are hazel, green, blue or brown and her hair is brown, reddish brown, black, blue black, it becomes rather guesswork. However, with skintone, if you have 35% Cyan in the skin, I'm not sure that is plausible for a Caucasian, even though some might think that is natural. I think you might agree though that for portraiture, the logical events might be skin, then eyes, hair and then clothes, background, etc. Of course it all has to blend in and make sense as a whole. For example in my first posting the coloring of the hair on top probably needs adjusting. Anyhow, it was mentioned that the girl has hazel eyes. I have hazel eyes and haven't a clue what the color is. It's got grey, green, blue and rimmed with yellow. How the heck do you color that in?? You bring up good points as usual!

Cheers
Dave

Flora
Flora decided

This sentence was meant to be humorous. I.e. I thought there was something in the picture but I was wrong.
I thought about this and my wife tells me it could make someone sound overbearing or dictatorial if it was taken literally. If that’s the way you read it then I apologise. :depressed

Maybe deduced or determined would have been a better choice of words

Verb Decide to make a decision

Italian
Italiano (Italian)
decidere, giudicare
In Italian it seems to mean ‘to judge’ as well. But is does not mean this in English.

You speak three languages. I only speak 2, English and Rubbish


Ken.

I hope everyone can weigh in with an opinion on my 3rd and hopefully last effort. All I did was global curves adjustments and to be honest, I was using RGB, CMYK and LAB. What I was trying to achieve was reasonable skin tone and hazel eyes. I have hazel eyes myself and I "think" I got the color right but not sure. Is the skin tone reasonable? Any thoughts?

Cheers
Dave

Hi Dave, I get a slight red tinge on my monitor. This is based on observation only, haven't opened it in Photoshop and checked the numbers yet. Most visible in the whites of the girls eyes. Mind, its after Midnight here, so could be my weary bloodshot eyes.

OK, looked at the numbers, it's not my eyes.

On the girl's right eye (as we look at her) the white area to left of her iris gives (R235,G202,B201).

Hi Gary. Thanks for responding. I actually get slightly higher red readings. What do you think more reasonable values should be? Also, I'm not sure that strictly global corrections can get you there. I think fine tuning of specific areas are necessary for this image. Hope you'll also opine on the iris and skin color.

Cheers
Dave

Hi Dave,

I'm like Flora, in that I generally just eyeball things.

Agree with you totally that you can't do a global colour change on this one.

My impressions are as follows.

Iris colour good, don't think that needs touching at all.

Skin, looks good, but I reserve judgement because Background and Hair seem too red, and distract eye.

I would suggest reducing red in Background and Hair, and I think this will balance things out, enabling a better judgement of skin, which I think is pretty near the mark.

Wish I had some numbers I could throw at you. (I'll have a try at this using your image if you don't mind.)

Gary

Hi Dave, had a play with your image.

First put a series of eyedroppers in the following places.

Background to left of girls head about level with her hairline. (R221,G194,B192)
Hair in mid tone area to left of girls mouth.(R151,G80,B99)
White of girls eye. (forgot to note, and have removed now).

Applied Curves Adj Layer, and using Red Channel mostly, adjusted to give girls eye a neutral tone (all channels equal). Masked skin, but this looked too pink, so used 40% grey and painted on mask to partially reveal skin.

Hair looked wrong, so applied colour balance adj layer and increased yellow and red to get colour I wanted, reduced layer opacity to 73% as colour was too intense.

Final Colour Dropper Numbers

Background (R185,G194,B192)
Hair (R104,G80,B72)
Eyes (All numbers equal)

Oops sorry forgot, on the Curves Adj Mask, masked out irises to reveal your colour, but it was a bit too saturated for image after I'd adjusted, so used a mid grey (darker than 50%) to partially mask.

Bit of a quick job, so some of the masking is not as good as it should be.

Hi BobNSA

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

I think you did a great job! Maybe a bit too much contrast ... (you lost most details ih her hair) and her eyes should be hazel ...

Ken,


Flora decided

This sentence was meant to be humorous. I.e. I thought there was something in the picture but I was wrong.
I thought about this and my wife tells me it could make someone sound overbearing or dictatorial if it was taken literally. If that’s the way you read it then I apologise. :depressed ....

.....You speak three languages. I only speak 2, English and Rubbish


Ken. Thank you for explaining that to me ... and thanks to your wife for her understanding .... She hit the nail on the head because that is the way I interpreted it ...

As for your 'second' language ... I can speak it too .... and use it quite regularly .... I shoud add it in the 'Spoken Languages' section in my curriculum!!! :D

Dave,
Flora, I absolutely agree with you but in the absence of information..
DaveThat's why, for me, it is very important to try and restore all possible 'original' informations at the very beginning of a restoration ....

I downloaded all your versions and compared them (skin only) ... Your last one is, in my opinion, absolutely the best ... but, like Gary, I still see a bit too much red ...

I agree that skin tone and colour can be the 'make or break' of portraits ... but, in my opinion, if a 'perfect' skin (often achieved after a lot of efforts) is surrounded by distracting over/under saturated or very badly off-colour elements it loses its 'magic' impact ...
_______________________

Gary and I work in a very similar way ... one difference is that he 'braves' the 'numbers' as well and I don't! ...

I couldn't agree more with him on the fact that "you can't do a global colour change on this one" and, I'd like to add that, in my opinion, it's very rare the case where you can fix a picture with a 'global' correction or adjustment ... be it for tone, contrast or colour ....

No matter if you use the numbers or if you simply 'eyeball' therefore simply 'move the sliders' like I do ... if you 'tweak' the reds to get a better skin colour, all the reds in the picture will be altered.

If the picture is unevenly faded, and as Ken pointed out "dyes must fade differently" ... this can lead to very bad results.... For this reason I use Layer masks for everything ... I.e. if by correcting the skin other colours have been nearly 'obliterated' ... keep the skin only and cover the rest with a mask .... Once you see the 'new' perfect skin in the otherwise untouched background ... you might realise that it isn't that perfect after all and still needs tweaking ....

I've been asked very often how I get to my results ... I think that it's just my stubborness in trying everything I know on the details while trying to never lose the 'overall' view ...

Gary..Flora. Thanks a bunch for your input! I think I'm closer to a result that I can live with and will factor in your suggestions as I move from global to specific. Good point too Flora about how the skin tone might need tweaking after balancing the other details like the hair and background. Gary, nice result although I was a teenie bit surprised with equal values for the whites of the eyes as I always thought there should be higher red value due to the underlying effect of blood vessels but not sure how valid that is. Anyhow, I'm now in my tweaking mode. Thanks again for taking the time and helping!

Cheers
Dave

This is a great picture. Beautiful girl. Great pose, High res. And difficult. I just can’t leave it alone.
It would make a great picture to go into the challenges section.

Like everyone has found it can’t be done in one step.
Also there is no real black point or grey point. The only real guide to colour is the whites of her eyes.

Even working from the edges does not help as they are faded but just not as much.

Here is my second attempt using a more conventional method

Eyedropper on faded blue and non faded edge blue
Used curves and mask to match main picture to edges.
Select all > Copy merged > Paste.

Eyedropper on white border (this should be white)
Used curves to make white
Select all > Copy merged > Paste.

The eyes are still not white (but not too far off) so some selective adjustments will be required.
Eyedropper on white of eye (this should be white)
Used curves to make white
Decided at this point to use the pupil for my black point and set that as well
Select all > Copy merged > Paste.

Used curves for skintone with layer mask to affect skin only

hue/sat and boosted master saturation

The hair still looked wrong so I opened my swatches and sampled a similar colour
Used curves and layer mask to correct

Touch up Marks etc

Well at least her blouse is yellow this time but I prefer the skin tone on my first post.


Ken.

i doubt the woman whose picture this is would find anything wrong with it, ken. nice job!

Craig

Thought I'd have a quick play at this. I am new to this so be gentle.

FFT
Curves
Colour Balance on whole image
select face - masked colour balance
cloning of various spots and dust etc

Total time about 20 minutes

pretty darn good for being 'new to this', lamedos :)

Craig

Welcome aboard Lamedos! Have to agree with Craig, a really good effort. My only suggestion is be careful using too much contrast. Her forehead is a bit blown out and much of the hair is pitch black not containing detail.
Hope to see many more posts from you!

Cheers
Dave

Hey guys

Thanks for the comments. Been a member here for a while but probably haven't logged on for over a year - had a go at a couple of restoration challenges, the "ripped to shreds, torn & three cups of coffee" types but really didn't do too well.

As I said, this was a "quick & dirty" play at the image - I don't understand all this swapping channels and measuring colour with the eye dropper stuff - just did it by eye. Only know basic Photoshop stuff.

I know what you mean about the hair - spending a bit more time I might have done a masked curves layer on that. Dunno about totally black though - must be my monitor setup. Dave, I had a look at your image and I see red and green blobs in the hair - is that my monitor? Craig, might be blind but I couldn't see yours?

Thanks again guys - I'll definately post some more after reading some of the tutorials.

Cheers

Roy

lamedos,

i didnt do one on this one. others seemed to have it well in hand.

Craig

Flora
I was just looking back through the postings here. Your posting about ‘decided’ shook me so much that I have just realised that I did not thank you for your reply to my question about CMYK.

You made some excellent points about colour which I will keep in mind in the future.

Thank you once again.

Ken.

Hi,

Ken,

Great job! :thumbsup: .... I agree with you about the skin though... it might be my monitor ... but it seems to have a a slight magenta/bluish tinge ...
...I have just realised that I did not thank you for your reply to my question about CMYK.

You made some excellent points about colour which I will keep in mind in the future.

Thank you once again.You are welcome! ... Glad if I could be of any help ... :pleased:

lamedos,

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

Nice job! ... Even if I have to agree with Dave about the solid block of dark colour hiding nearly all details in her hair ... as usual, it might be my monitor ... but her skin seems a bit too yellow .... but, after reading this Thread, you know we all had problems with the colours of this picture .... particularly with the skin ... :surprise:

Hey Flora - thanks for the welcome!

I think you're being a touch too kind with the "it might be my monitor" comment! Looking at some of your work on here I'd bet an entire weeks chocolate marshmallows budget on the fact that it's more to do with the fact that I haven't a clue what I'm doing.

Cheers

Roy

Roy, I'm pleased to tell you, your chocolate marshmallows are safe. No one produces corrected images the way Flora does. Period!! Having said that, I personally have a tough time adjusting images by "feel" as Flora does it. I "think" I would prefer a workflow that involves numbers corrections followed by Flora's " feel" to give newbies, et all, a chance a getting close to a great image.
I think as one who is trying to get to Flora's level is that you have two choices: admire and somehow try to achieve her work thru trial and error on each image (which can't be matched) or start with conservative adjustments and then playing from there. I think my lame bottom line is this: If you're happy with Flora's superb renditions, print it off and enjoy. There's probably nothin coming along that is going to be better. Know that too, Flora's feel comes with years of experience. I'm still trying to help you understand the numbers so that one day you can move beyond and correct instinctifly as Flora does.
The bottom line is there probably is nothing really wrong with you monitor. I get the same generosity from this lady. Thank you Flora..

Dave

But...always love a challenge and had to give this one a shot. (newbie catchin' up)

I've got two versions...on color one not.