I have exhausted my meager knowledge of PS CS. Can someone point me in the right direction for removing the blurred color bands in this photo? They were caused by the out of focus wire cage between the tiger and I.

Thanks, Catia

I improved it some. There is a vertical and horizontal band across the photo. I selected the vertical one first use the Marquis tool then I went into quick mask mode and blurred the selection to mimic the vertical wire and copied that to a new layer to work on it. I did the same thing with the horizontal wire. I then tried a multiply blending mode and decreased the saturation. Its better but perhaps copying to separate layers may get you started.

hi catia,

these type problems are a good exercise for me. it's an area i've had difficulty correcting in the past. so, i gave it a shot.

first, i created a mask across the trouble band
i applied the fast fix plugin for a general quick fix just to get it a bit easier.
i added a contrast adjustment layer, grouped to the layer with the mask and added contrast and darkened.
added a new raster layer in the same group. on this i did a little painting to correct the orange in the gray background. blurred this with gausian blur.
did some smudge and airbrush on the new raster to even things up a bit.
merge all.

did a lot of clone to get rid of traces of the banding still left. but none on the tiger. used a little smudge too. took our the plants in the background. they were just in the way and not essential to the pic. got rid of the orange blur above that curb also.
ran another fast fix to even up things on the tiger
added a color balance adjustment layer to even up the colors on the tiger.
merge all

ran a light clone on the banding marks on the tiger and off to even this out.
ran the saturation up/down brush to do the same. also some lighten/darken brush for same.
used the 'change to target' brush to color correct the left ear.
used the push brush to fix around the left ear on the background. getting rid of final traces of orange.
a little more saturation brush to finalize things.

done.

hope you like it,

Craig

edit: oh, and somewhere in there was a use of Stroker's 'Lum frequencies' plugin to sharpen, particularly the tiger's head.

Thanks Phil and Craig. You have given me a couple of places to start and more importantly shown me that all is not lost. :)

Catia

catia,

you're welcome.

i made just a few more minor corrections. just wanted to try out psp's black and white points and see what it could do. still learning all the new features.

Craig

This is just a quickie I did, I could do a better job if I spent more time on it, and was more careful with my layer bleeds.

Basically its just a mix of masked colour correction and burn layers. Each section needed correcting separately because the discoulouration and brightness distortion was not uniform. In some places I've overcorrected because I was being rough with it. I'm sure you could do a much better job if you spent time on it.
I've included my layers so you can see what that looks like

Had a very quick go with this one, blending out of band edges still needs some work.

That is terrific Nancy. Thanks a lot. :)

Catia

Normally, I'm pretty good at seperating varying colors and shades from one another-- but this tiger presented a fairly tough challenge because using masks, let's just say, is not my forte and the colors between the bands and the tiger were far too similar. I looked at the picture and asked myself, "Is there an easier way to fix this problem?"

I read a thread awhile ago where someone mention Lab color as a potential solution to color problems, so I switched the picture into lab mode, selected the color bands with a regular marquee, copied them into a new layer, inversed the selection, copied the unbanded section into a layer of their own and then adjusted the "lightness" layer's brightness and contrast of the band layer until it about matched the unbanded one. Then I popped it back into RGB mode, did a match color - merge between the two layers and the color band was all but gone. And a quick swish with the heal to get rid of the thin lines of difference (mind you, this is just quickie).....

It was the first time I actually ever used lab color mode, and it took all but a couple of minutes to achieve a fair looking picture. I'd imagine with just a little more time and tweaking the results could be phenomenal.

Started with layers and eraser to get tones and colors better on average, then used burn, dodge, sponge, and paint brush set to color, as well as some cloning on background. Correcting tones wasn't so hard, but getting all the orange out took a bit longer. A tiger's stripes are all black, but the cage bars turned them orange, and that was best fixed with hand tools.

Larger image with comparison:
http://www.pbase.com/pstewart/image/49065524/original

Excellent piece of work Phyllis, welcome to RP.

Looks great Phyllis, very nice indeed

Hi Phyllis Welcome to RP, Nice job.

With mine I feel like I cheated a little because I desaturated the background. But I suppose the final result is all that counts.

Ken

phyllis,

welcome to RP.

i'm curious, how did you use eraser on this? Started with layers and eraser to get tones and colors better on average,

excellent job, btw!

Craig

Hi Phyllis Welcome to RP, Nice job.

With mine I feel like I cheated a little because I desaturated the background. But I suppose the final result is all that counts.

Ken
Ken, unfortunately most are not too concerned about the way you get there, just the final result, don't take it personally. This however is a request for help so a little different, but in the real world only results count, not how you got there. BTW, pretty good job, but unfortunately Phyllis is the standout on this one. I have not had the patience with this one personally.

Thanks for the nice welcome... lots of new faces here since last time I stopped by.

Craig, I used the eraser as described here:
http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=45011#45011

Cassidy, I don't think desaturating the background is cheating at all... I think it was a brilliant idea. Wish I'd thought of that!

Whatever works, so far I have not been able to put a patch on either of you

Aye, Phyllis did an amazing job on that picture-- she took the time to finish the process, unlike the rest of us lazy slobs. :P

Aye, Phyllis did an amazing job on that picture-- she took the time to finish the process, unlike the rest of us lazy slobs.

:lol: So that's your excuse, eh? Thanks, Roo, but if there's a lazier person around, I'd like to meet him/her, because I'm as lazy as they come. That's probably why, after the initial layering technique, I didn't even try to think of other shortcuts, since experimenting would take effort, so I just grabbed the hand tools and took care of the stripes and mismatches one at a time. Sometimes it's easier just to do it "the hard way"... which turns out to be the easy way after all! This took less than a half hour, maybe 20 minutes total. Anything over that, and I'm wayyyy too lazy to bother with it.

This one wasn't that bad, but, face it, working on problem photos is often a tedious chore! This is why I have moved away from restoration (though not retouching/enhancement), since I finally decided that no one can pay me enough to do what some of them require! I prefer to do paintings and photo art nowadays, since there's a lot more variety, thus more fun! Now that I've made the tiger presentable, I think it would be fun to paint him! Wheee! :clown:

Quote
I didn't even try to think of other shortcuts, since experimenting would take effort, so I just grabbed the hand tools and took care of the stripes and mismatches one at a time. Sometimes it's easier just to do it "the hard way"... which turns out to be the easy way after all!


Spot On. I had several false starts at this trying to do is an “easy” way


Quote
This is why I have moved away from restoration (though not retouching/enhancement), since I finally decided that no one can pay me enough to do what some of them require!


You want to try Septembers contest here :lol:


Ken

Wow! You guys are great. I have to go with Phyllis because I know what the original looked like ( I was there taking the shot). The background was all concrete. But Ken has a neat approach for us "artistically challenged folks." I'm going to cheat Ken. :)

Thanks everyone, Catia

:lol: So that's your excuse, eh?
That's my excuse n' I'm stickin' to it. :)

Thanks, Roo, but if there's a lazier person around, I'd like to meet him/her, because I'm as lazy as they come.

Hi, Phyllis, I'm Roob, the laziest person who ever joined RetouchPro. :P

That's probably why, after the initial layering technique, I didn't even try to think of other shortcuts, since experimenting would take effort

Aye, if I can't think of any other way to do something I'll take the bull by the horns, but only as a last resort. Though, I'm notorious for asking myself, "Is there an easier way to do this now?" And if not, when I'm done I'll ask it again, it saves me mucho time in the future if/when I have to do it again.

But I know where you're coming from-- still, outstanding job with the brush, I really don't think I'm up to that calibre (or will be soon) when it comes to manually brushing a color out.

Now that I've made the tiger presentable, I think it would be fun to paint him! Wheee!

Between you and me, I wouldn't approach a tiger with a paint brush.

Hi everybody,

Phyllis,

so nice to see you back!!!! :pleased:

....and excellent work as usual!!!! :bigthmb: :bigthmb:

I fixed this in a different way ... After loosely selecting them, I first used the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment to bring back some consistency to the faded areas, after which it was selective usage of Levels, Selective Colors and blank Layers set to Color for correcting the colours.

Blank Layers set to Soft Light and Overlay to balance the remaining fading ...

oh man, sometimes you just have to bow down at the feet of greatness. just when i thought phyllis's rendition was as good as it could get, along comes flora :) :shocked: :bigthmb: just incredible, flora! i'm moving to italy. that's all there is to it.

Craig

I almost need a tutorial on this-- getting from point A to point B in babysteps. :P

Can anyone recommend any good resources/books about this particular kind of problem and its varying solutions?

Great work so far!
I’am kind of a newbie in here, but if this is not a contest I like too tell how I worked on this image. Brushes are not my force so I tried to avoid them:
Selected the vertical bar with rectangular tool, but retracted some area on the right side with the lasso tool.
Feather the selection, 15px
Adjusted the individual channels in levels. Some painting in the mask so the adjustment blend nicely with the area outside the adjusted area.
Reselect by Ctrl-click (Command-click) the layer mask.
Contract the selection 15px. (Made Action of this).
Repeat these steps. I made five adjustment layers.
Do the same with the horizontal bar. Four layers.
Flatten image. Patch tool in the problem areas. Just the wall left.
Overlay layer with 50% gray. Paint with black or white to darken or lighten areas. 8 % Opacity.
Sponge tool, Desaturate. 20% flow in some of the white on the tiger.
At last: curve adjustment layer.
Hope this can help you when you work on the high res. image.

Frode :glasses:

selective usage of Levels, Selective Colors and blank Layers set to Color for correcting the colours.

Flora, fantastic, as usual! By "selective usage" here, do you mean you made selections for the areas you wanted to affect with the adjustments?

By the way, I still use your wonderful "black/white paint on overlay layer" all the time... very useful little tip.

Hi Flora. I was hoping you would take a shot at this. Now if I can just figure out what you did. :) :dizzy:

Phyllis,

How good to see you're back. :classic: :classic:
Please don't "disappear" again, your posts from the early days of RP have been an inspiration to many (well at least this one) new pixel pushers.

Welcome back!!

Rô

Desaturate. 20% flow in some of the white on the tiger.Frode, welcome to RetouchPRO :bigthmb:
Seems that you did the hard bits just perfectly, and forgot an easy one.
The background colouration is distracting and could easily have be solved by desaturating and / or cloning the colour.

Thanks for detailing the steps. :thumbsup:

Rô

Thank you Rô,
Lots of skilled people in here!!
I always listening:
Desaturated in Hue/Sat AL, Sat -90.
Painted back the colour on the the tiger by painting with black in the mask.
Fine tuned the Curves AL. Painted a bit in the mask to, 8% Opacity.
Wonder if I should extract the tiger and placed it in the wilderness, but mayby norwegian forests is a bit strange?

Frode

Thank, Ro, nice to see you too. I'm kinda busy with my own site, but it's nice to see what's happening elsewhere. Or maybe my addiction is just getting harder to satisfy...where's the "addict" emoticon? :ogre:

Frode, looks great! Just could use some more contrast around mouth/chin/neck area and the eyes could be brightened a bit.

Catia, maybe if we ask nicely Flora will give us more details on making those selections and tweaking with the adjustment layers. Flora, what order worked best or did you just hop around till it was perfect? And it IS perfect.

Frode, nice job. I couldn't have gotten that far. But I have a tip for you for final clean up. The attachement shows two areas, A and B. In A, the basic colorization is neutral, black and white. Your image shows some yellow cast on the chest and on the left side of the chin. It seems out of place with the surrounding areas. In B, there is color, but there is a dark splotch in the middle of it.

To fix A, use a brush, blending Hue, opacity 10%, large, soft. Set color to white. Brush over discolored areas, gradually removing cast. Hue works on color only, while Color works with Hue and Saturation. If there is no color, ie white, Hue will 'decolor', neutralize the brushed area.

For area B, we don't want to neutralize, we want to put the color back in the unsaturated area. Similar to above, but this time, blending Color, and sample a color of the stripe that is similar to what you want. Build up color gradually until it closely matches surrounding area.

The first method is commonly used to remove color casts in the teeth and whites of the eyes. The second, to remove reddish casts caused by blemishes and differences in make up on women.

Larry

well, with all the great works being posted here, i just couldnt leave mine alone. taking tips from phyllis and flora i corrected some more things in mine. i think i could live with it now :)

Craig

Wonder if I should extract the tiger and placed it in the wilderness

Great idea for a finishing touch... tigers can't be happy in cement cages, after all. Someone should do this!

Craig, great job! One more little thing and it would be done... mouth and chest area seem a bit washed out compared to the rest. Maybe a very low opacity big soft burn brush would do the trick.

OOPS! Edited cuz I'd typed "dodge" instead of "burn"...silly me. :tongue:

Thanks for the tip, Larry

In B I just missed when I painted in the mask.

This one should have been a Challenge, Phyllis.
If it was a Challenge or a contest, I think I had fixed the lack of contrast to.

Give us the high res. image and lets start over :D

Frode

well, phyllis, i wasnt going to change anything else, but i kept looking at your comments and my picture and being the compulsive so and so that i am, i made some more changes. i worked on some of the things you mentioned and also found a few odd places where the orange still existed where it shldnt. i also blurred the background and cloned in some fur where the whites had blown things out. also fixed a few minor smudges that needed sharpening and a few other minor points like the white of the concrete curb.

now, if you find anything else.... ;)

Craig

well, phyllis [...] now, if you find anything else...
Craig, if I do, what will happen? I am going to live dangerously and assume you meant to finish that sentence with "please tell me." If I'm wrong, I will move to Montana where you'll never find me. If I'm right, I'm still nervous. I’m always nervous when someone asks for critiques, wondering how much they REALLY want. But I’ll be brave and assume you really want advice on improvements.

A: Stripes too black
A&B: Eye color and tone don’t match, nor do stripes
C: Mouth area needs to be darker, more contrast here
D: Stripe is darkened, but too saturated with orange, needs to be desaturated cuz tigers’ stripes are black/gray, never orangey.
E: Area too light, fur washed out, and stripes too light and still orange
X’s: Fur doesn’t match...nose is less saturated and much darker than shoulder, which, altho orange, is too light due to bars. I think the best orange for the tiger lies between these two colors somewhere.

So, are you sorry you asked? On my site we have an animated emoticon called :sofahide: where I can duck behind a big blue sofa for protection...sure wish you had one here now. Shudddder!

Give us the high res. image and lets start over.
There's a lot I hate in my own patched-together effort here, and if I were going to print this tiger, I'd definitely start over and do it right next time, knowing now where the tricky parts were and how to handle them better. But like the rest of us, I just thought I'd give it a go and didn't strive for a perfect final version. If we did it from scratch again, we'd all have better results I'm sure. :bow: Except of course for Fantastic Flora, whose work can seldom be improved upon!

Ok, I tried to finish it. A few selective Curve adjustment layers and Larrys tip about desaturate. A Hue/Sat layer with Sat +17.
Smart sharpen.

Frode

Frode, that looks really great! Only two teensy things popped out at me... the shades of orange on top of his head don't match left to right, and the whites on his shoulders are a touch too dark and could use a bit of brightening. Otherwise, looks terrific!

Craig, if I do, what will happen? I am going to live dangerously and assume you meant to finish that sentence with "please tell me." If I'm wrong, I will move to Montana where you'll never find me. hehehe, no need to move to montana :) although, i do hear it's a pretty scenic state.

you may always critique anything i post on retouchpro. it's part of the reason for being here, to me at least. i would caution one thing (not that you're guilty of the following, but just as a message to everyone); the word 'critique' is sometimes mis-used in 'art' circles. the word means to keenly observe and comment upon. this means both the good points and the bad (good and bad are a bit relative and subjective here, but i'll use them anyways). if one ONLY points out the bad, as has been somewhat the trend of late in other venues besides retouchpro, there is a tendency to make the artist think there is nothing right with his/her work. so, if one critiques, one shld always also point out the good in the same manner that one points out the bad, point by point. only pointing out the bad is like an employer who only tells an employee when he's done something wrong and never compliments or notes when the employee does something right. one tends to get that 'boy, i just cant do anything right' sort of feeling in the employee. so, that's my only criteria i ask when critiqueing.

now, you did compliment me on the piece. that's good and i appreciate that :) and by virtue of that compliment what you've said in essence is, 'i like everything else you did, but these points'. so, in fact, you did follow my criteria; so, we're good and no need to hide behind the cyber-sofa :)

as for what i may do with what you've suggested:

A. not going to worry about this one
A&B yes, noticed this myself and originally chalked it up to 'lighting', but looking at it now, you may be right.
C agreed. thought i had fixed that...ah well.
D yeah, i worked on that, but in looking at flora's, i'm not there yet.
E. worked on that also. it was REALLY blown out. had to clone in some texture just to get it to there. maybe i'll use the whiten/darken brush, but it's actually satisfactory to me as is... except for the stripe. can desat and darken that.
X's yes, had noticed that also and really wasnt sure whether to chalk that up to 'lighting' or if it shld be handled. not even quite sure how i got that. i could lighten the head fur a bit and see. in actual fact, when i look at all the fur, there definitely seems to be regions of difference in shading....right side/left side of head, nose relative to head, nose relative to body and so on. i may have to look at all those regions again and the original lighting.

also, one critique of my own on flora's. this could just be my monitor, as i change my gamma at different times of the day, but it overall seems a bit too saturated, again, to my tastes and settings. overall, both yours and hers are excellent, though. but then, i'm almost always impressed with flora's :) and i can see from yours, that i'm going to have to add another 'gee, i wonder what phyllis would do with this?' to my list :)

so, thank you for taking the time to critique mine, especially with the added illustrated image!

Craig

Thanks and Sorry everybody!!!

I'm just in the middle of moving home .... Came back here tonight for a nice HOT shower... and to check my mail ...

After the shower I'm going to write the details of my restoration!!!

I'm back ....

Thanks again everybody for your kind comments!!!! :pleased:

Craig,

just tell me when you arrive and I'll pick you up from the airport! ... :wink:

What I did in this picture:

* Loosely selected and strongly feathered the faded areas (Attachments 1).

*Copied my selection on its own Layer. (Attachments 2)

* Used the Shadow/Highligh Adjustment for consistency and very basic colour correction. (Attachments 3)

*(Attachments 4) shows how my correction Layer looked like right after the Shadow/Highlight fix.

* Created a Blank Layer set to Color and a very soft black brush (Opacity 30-40%) to practically desaturate around the tiger and on the tiger's coat where it should have been white (or nearly white)

* Created Levels Adjustment Layer for a first enhancement of the image ...

(Attachments 5) shows how my 'selection' looked like after these two last steps.

After this, it was further enhancing by creating Blank Layers set to Soft Light/Overlay ... (I'm so glad you are still using it Phyllis!!!!) and with a soft Black or white brush (Opacity 10%) I painted over the parts I wanted to enhance ... (Black on the shadows to increase them, white over the highlights to make them stand out more)

I used a Selective Colors AL to enhnce the yellow/red of the tiger's coat.

Finally, I used USM to lightly sharpen the tiger only ...

Great job everybody!!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Hi Frode,

Welcome to RP! :pleased:

Great Job!!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: ... and once you touched up what Phyllis suggested, it's really going to look terrific!!!

just tell me when you arrive and I'll pick you up from the airport! ... hehehe, you're a dear :)

and thank you for posting your steps. i was curious also.

Craig

Flora, do you have room in your new place for one more houseguest? I'm very good at unpacking. All I want in return is to quietly look over your shoulder as you retouch. I'll even cook! Hope you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Seriously, thanks so much for taking the time to show the steps and especially the shadow/highlight settings. I've saved that one for future reference in case I try this guy again. And I should have known your magic overlay/softlight layer trick would have a big part.

Thanks, Flora

I think I leave it now. Nature is my subject and I don't believe the tiger is 100 % symetric. Maybe it's just an excuse.
Thanks for shearing your technique, I will look into it (The result is great). And that’s why I joined. You can always find new techniques to speed up your work. I also have a little handicap in my colour vision, so I always looking for ways to find the right colours in other ways than subjective vision and judgement. And that’s also why I posted my first post, another way to do it.
RP have been fun so far. Maybe I will look into some of your old challenges.

Frode

phyllis,

despite my earlier, long, and somewhat frustrated post, i did take what you had to say to heart and worked on this some more. the eyes are now more even. the orange is now more even all around. the stripes are darker, though maybe could stand some more. the mouth is darker and i got rid of some more orange where it shldnt be and i redid the overall look and feel a bit. i even re-did his left ear, though you hadnt mentioned that one.

it's no flora or phyllis, but i do like it better.

thank you!

Craig

Craig, looks good to these old eyes! All the colors seem to be right and the tones match well. :thumbsup: It's got strong blacks, but that just adds intensity, and tigers are pretty intense critters, after all.

I come from China, I like here.
Hope to be with everybody to become the friend!
:) Beg your pardon for me mess English :evil:


adong

phyllis,

thank you, and thank you for taking the time to seeing me all the way through this! i wouldnt have gotten there without you.

Craig

Thanks everyone for all of your excellent work and write-ups. Stay tuned. I am in the process of trying all of this new info out on the original picture (which had another set of bands that I cropped out in the posted version. :)

Catia

Adong, nice work! You did a good job. There is a little bit of orange glow still on his left eye and down around his mouth, but overall it is very good.

:bigthmb: Phyllis,Thank your good suggestion, I will work hard to make out better

adong