Hi my name is Sheri and I am a newbie. I hope I uploaded the right size file correctly. This is an old photo of my mom when she was a secretary. Yes it is a Beehive hair style and it was very RED. This is my first retouch, or is it a restoration, I did in my Photoshop workshop. I was hoping for some help with techniques that would have made it better.
The left eye is bad (I used a dodge and burn tool, and it is too harsh) also the hair line is too obvious. I did an adjustment layer for hue and saturation. I feathered it.Was this the correct thing to do? She still has some brownish stuff on her face, I am not sure if it was there or I caused it, but how to get rid of it is the question. Other than that I started with levels and unsharpen mask and the healing & clone tool. Any suggestions to make it better. It is okay if I have to start all over again. It was a beginning class so I was just guessing a lot.

I love this site and plan to be very active. My goal is to be an accomplished retoucher and restoration artist. There seems to be sooo much to learn, most of what you talk about like the high pass filter etc is beyond me, even after reading the tutorials. I will have to do it step by step to see if I can figure out what happens. I am working on one of the challenges now and will enter it even if it is bad so I can get feedback on how much I am going to struggle. Any help is appreciated.

I have some great photos that would be fun challenges or archive for practice, somewhere I read that I should email thumbnails to Doug. Is that correct?

Thanks!

Welcome aboard Sheri. You have a great attitude, which is a big plus for learning. Overall, I think you did pretty good. The biggest thing for me, and the only one I'll comment on, is the skintones. I think you'll be happier if you lower the cyan, and increase the yellow. Yellow should be higher than magenta. I'm attaching a copy of "Bruce's skintones". This chart comes in very handy.

I would comment on more, but unlike you, I don't have a good attitude, so I don't learn much. :(

Well, I can't upload the skinchart because I've already done that in this (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7896) thread. Check out Vikki's correction in that thread. She's great at that stuff.

Ed

Hey Mom's Picture bring back memories. An excellent retouch. I took your photo and increased the contrast and the saturation and changed to a little more red/yellow.

Sheri,

Welcome to RetouchPRO. I think that's a fine first effort. I just have to comment on one thing.

That's not a beehive. That's the mother of all beehives.

But seriously, folks. Nice work and I, too, admire your attitude. You should go far.

dc

sheri,

welcome to RetouchPRO.

you picked a doozy to begin your career. the lighting is obviously the big problem here. i followed phil and simply cropped a lot of it out. all that stuff on the right wasnt that important to the image, so why try to fix it. but, if you are interested in keeping it whole, some can be done with that part... but not much. the whites are just too 'blown out'.

i'm not going to give you a lot of detail on what i did at the moment. it's late and i've a lot to do yet. the major points were 'contrast/brightness', 'color balance', and a plugin known as 'lum frequencies', made by one of the members here. i did do some hand work and pretty much ignored the rest of the blown out whites, except for the filing cabinet, which i cloned back in.

you might want to look at your first image post. she is actually NOT looking to her left, but is looking at the camera. that's probably why you had a hard time with the eye. this became very obvious when i used the contrast/brightness filter.

craig

Hi Sheri,

Pretty darn good first attempt--or any attempt for that matter. Gorgeous job on her dress--wow! I think her skin looks too grey.

There is fairly decent color information still in the image. I took a try and here are the steps:
1. Duplicate the original
2. Auto contrast and auto color
3. Applied curve (first attachment). Applied a mask to this curve that is the inverse of the image luminance. (this prevents the highlights from getting any brighter--doesn't matter much if you crop out the bright window.)
4. Split out the saturation channel as per this tutorial:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=151
5. Applied a curve to the resultant saturation channel (second attachment)
6. Color balance layer--tiny bit more cyan/blue in the highlights.
7. Another curve to increase effective exposure
8. Healed a couple of the spots
9. Paintshop Pro Noise reduction

I think the hair and skin color look okay here. I didn't even touch that excellent dress job you did. :thumbsup:

Bart

Just did a simple levels adjustment on each channel (R,G,B) to get result below.
Then upped the saturation.

Still needs cleaning up a little, and colour needs tweaking a touch, but gives you a basic starting point.

Edit: Took some blue out of image with a curves adj. Upped contrast by copying to new layer set to Hard Light, 35% opacity.

Thank you everyone for you help. I will examine and try each thing you suggested to see how it works. The Blend modes are very confusing to me, are there ones that retouchers use mostly I can play around with instead of getting confused by all the them? Thank you so much. I have looked at the tutorials but most are over my head so I am thinking of signing up for Lynda.com and learning more of the basics while I do this.

Thank you so much again. You will see a lot of me.

Sheri

Hi Sheri,

As long as you have a layer (not the background layer), you can change the blending mode of the layer as many times as you want. It's a good way to get an idea what the different blending modes will do. You should be able to select a blending mode, then before doing anything else, use the up or down keys on the keyboard to quickly see what changes different modes will produce. Changing the opacity of the layer will also allow you to lessen the strength of the blending mode. As long as you don't flatten the image, or merge that layer, those options remain until you do. Try it, and have fun!

Ed

Hi Sheri!

Welcome to RetouchPRO from me too!!! :pleased:

I think you did a great job on a difficult picture as a starter!!

The picture is very faded so consistency had to be added...
the contrast had to be increased...
the bluish/cyan cast had to be removed...
the colours had to be corrected
shadows and spots had to be minimized or removed

If you are interested, I'll write a detailed description of what I did ... in the meantime, adding to Ed's excellent tip about blending modes, you could have a look at the 'List of Blending Modes' and the 'Blending Modes Examples' from Photoshop own help file

P.S. ... as Craig rightly pointed out, your Mom was definitely looking at the camera and not to her left! :)

thank you, flora :)

and a very good job you did there! did you use levels, curves, or historgram to lower the whites? or maybe even something else?

craig

Hi Sheri

Welcome to RetouchPro.

Well Done. You did a great job on a Very difficult first picture.

Here is my attempt.

Ken.

Flora, I am consistently amazed at your tweaks. :bow: Okay, that's it, I'm going to burn my copies of Paintshop and Photoshop and just stick to engineering. :wink:

Seriously...of course we want to know what you did!

Bart

Ed, I will try the "playing" with blending modes today. Good sugestion. Sometimes I just can't figure out an efficient way to learn.

Flora, yes I would like to have a detailed discription of what you did.! It looks great.

Thanks again everyone.
I want to do this photo justice, it is really brings me back to my highschool years.

Sheri

ok, i had to have another go at this. my first was ok, but every time i see one of flora's i go, 'oh well, back to the drawing board' :) you do set a standard, flora.

this one involved mostly the same filters and tools, but this time i did more cleaning of the image and tried to fix things in smaller gradations rather than trying to fix it all at once.

craig

This looks nice. I have printed all the directions out and when Flora sends her details I will start from scratch and try everyones suggestions. This is a great way to learn. Thanks again. Sheri

Hi,

thank you all very much for your kindness!!! :pleased:

Bart, :lol: ...

Going through the problems I saw in this picture, what I did is:

1) The picture is very faded so consistency had to be added...

* I duplicated the background and set the duplicate's Blending to 'Multiply'

2) the contrast had to be increased...

* I duplicated the 'Multiply Layer' and changed its Blending to Overlay

* Not completely happy yet, I added a Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer (Brightness +41; Contrast +43)... This made some areas of the picture like windows etc. much too light so I first painted black over those areas on the AL's mask, then decreased the AL Opacity to 86% and changed its Blending to 'Luminosity' as to not increase the already very strong bluish/cyan cast of the original.

3) the bluish/cyan cast had to be removed...

* If possible, what I usually try first is the old 'Set Grey Point' trick ... meaning: if in the original I find an area or a point I can quite safely assume it could be grey, I create a Curves AL (or Levels .... they are the same for this purpose), select the 'Set Grey Point' Picker and simply click on the previously 'chosen' area or point. .... That's exactly what I did here .... I selected a point on the filing cabinet between Sheri's Mom's chin and shoulder and set the Grey Point there... Since the cast hadn't completely disappeared, I duplicated the Curves AL hiding the points that had become a tad too yellow by painting with a fuzzy black brush (Opacity 50%) on the duplicate's Layer Mask.

4) the colours had to be corrected

* Much better, but it still looked rather 'flat', so, I added a Selective Colors AL and tweaked the individual colours until I was satisfied.

* I created a Color Balance AL to increase the red in her hair ...Yes it is a Beehive hair style and it was very RED 5) shadows and spots had to be minimized or removed

* For this, and for selectively enhance areas of the picture, I used the "Blank Layers set to ..." method as described in my Tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=206)

Finally, I used USM to slightly increase Contrast and Sharpness.

Snapshot of part of my workflow (Attachment 1).
Results after the different steps described here (Attachment 2).

Not only did your details help, but I am working through a Lynda.com tutorial on enhancing photos so I even understand what you are doing this time. I can't wait to try it.
Thanks.

This looks nice. I have printed all the directions out and when Flora sends her details I will start from scratch and try everyones suggestions. This is a great way to learn. Thanks again. Sheri thank you, sheri :)

btw, sheri, that image is cropped to an 8x10 standard for easy printing.

flora,

i'm curious. would you look at your finished pic and mine together and tell me what you see different? i see a difference but not quite sure how you got to where you got and why it's so different from mine. i think both look good, but the differences got me to wondering about them.

craig

Thanks Sheri! ... Glad I could be of help! :happy:

Graig,

... sorry, but I'm afraid I didn't understand your question ... :o:
For what differences are there between your restoration (great by the way!!!) and mine I'm sure you have done what I did in the attachment ....
For how I got to my result .... I thought I had explained it ....

Glad to see you too "tried to fix things in smaller gradations rather than trying to fix it all at once." .... That's what I've been doing since always ... It can be very time consuming ... but, on the long run, I personally find it very rewarding ....

flora,

thanks :)

ok, we have some color differences, but that's not what i'm asking about. i think the best way to describe it is with an analogy. yours i would liken to something done by hollywood on film, where mine looks more like it was done with a video camera. it's an overall quality to the images. i suppose it could be yours are warmer and a bit softer, where mine seems a bit colder, i guess.

i did look at your write up but couldnt really figure what to attribute that quality to, that 'hollywood film' quality. it's a good look, btw.

craig

Hi Sheri,

You are off to a great start and you picked a great forum to learn the craft of retouching. I have only been coming around for a few months and I can't believe how much I have learned.

This image was a real challenge. To save time, I started with Bart's image. I used the Shadow and Highlight and the Exposure adjustments in CS2. I followed with selective blurs to the background and use of the smudge tool to smooth out some edges. The "mother of all Beehives" still needs some brush work to create hair strands and the arms could use some further color adjustment. However, a good example of the power that Photoshop has to rescue old photos.

Photomaster

I still haven't gotten to the part in photoshop CS2 where I have learned how and when to use highlights & shadows and the exposure. There seems to be so much to learn. I will go to that part of my Lynda tutorial and learn about them and try them. Thank you!