This is my first attempt at retouching b/w photos and am having a particularly hard time getting some of the wrinkles out of this jacket arm without it looking horribly bad--have tried everything I can think of. The Katrin Eismann example of the digital seamstress doesn't really work in this situation. Any suggestions on how to do this or if anyone knows of previously written examples that they could lead me to I would be really grateful. thanks...

try to use the dodge and burn tool at a low opacity and soft edge brush, you can even out the highlights and shadows.

Quickly before breakky, it's a bit overdone, but using byRo's Degrunge

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213

This technique really is a bit of a swiss army knife

Cass,

What was your radius setting?

k

How about really smooth?

The degrunge method gets exponentially more powerful when you learn how to do custom high-pass filters. The highpass filter in photoshop is omni-directional, but to smooth out this sleeve without killing the shading of the arm you need a vertical highpass. So duplicate the original, do a directional blur (150 pixels). Copy the original again, then do apply image, select the direction blur layer as the source, blending subtract, offset 128. Now you have a directional highpass although it's double strength (set fill to 50% to mimick the strength of standard highpass.) Continue with normal degrunging--adjust fill of the highpass. Did a second standard degrunge to remove finer wrinkles.

Bart

bart, that's amazing. you got a translation for Paint Shop Pro? i played with that image and couldnt even come close to that result.

Bart... Like Craig said. AMAZING. Wow!! :bow: :bow: :bow:

bart, that's amazing. you got a translation for Paint Shop Pro? i played with that image and couldnt even come close to that result.

Thanks.

The motion blur in Paint Shop Pro goes one direction which is not what we want in this situation (the Photoshop motion blur goes symmetrically in two directions). So you blur once up then a second time down (100% strength isn't enough, so blur up once, down once, up a second time, and down a second time.) To convert the blur into a highpass you use image arithmetic and subtract the blur image from the original with a bias of 128. Then use gaussian blur for that result with radius about 2 or 3. That's how you get the inverse grunge layer.

The other thing you really need is linear light blend mode which is somewhat of a pain to duplicate in Paint Shop Pro, but I've attached a layer palette showing how you do it. You have a group. At the bottom of the group is the inverse grunge layer. Next is the original image at 50% opacity. Next is a levels layer with the input sliders at 64/1/192. (All that is equivalent to linear light in photoshop.) On top of all that stuff is the mask to selectively apply the degrunge.

Do this a second time (not shown) for the finer textures just like I did in Photoshop. 11 layers total.

BTW, I actually intentionally left in the edge of the crease near mid-sleave just because a real sleave needs to have at least one bend in it.

Bart

Cass,

What was your radius setting?

k


Sorry Ken, really not sure, but I'd think around maybe 6ish

Thanks for all the input. That is an amazing job you did Bart. Bart, I got lost a little in your instructions--could you, or someone, tell me what a directional blur is--I'm still pretty new to this? thanks

Thanks for all the input. That is an amazing job you did Bart. Bart, I got lost a little in your instructions--could you, or someone, tell me what a directional blur is--I'm still pretty new to this? thanks

Thanks! What I meant was motion blur in the filter>blur menu.

Bart

Hi All

Thought I would try as well....

Bart you lost me... great job though!!!

Like Cass I used standard Degrunge

Highpass.... 8
Gaussian Blur.....2.6

Butch

Thanks.

The motion blur in Paint Shop Pro goes one direction which is not what we want in this situation (the Photoshop motion blur goes symmetrically in two directions). So you blur once up then a second time down (100% strength isn't enough, so blur up once, down once, up a second time, and down a second time.) To convert the blur into a highpass you use image arithmetic and subtract the blur image from the original with a bias of 128. Then use gaussian blur for that result with radius about 2 or 3. That's how you get the inverse grunge layer.

The other thing you really need is linear light blend mode which is somewhat of a pain to duplicate in Paint Shop Pro, but I've attached a layer palette showing how you do it. You have a group. At the bottom of the group is the inverse grunge layer. Next is the original image at 50% opacity. Next is a levels layer with the input sliders at 64/1/192. (All that is equivalent to linear light in photoshop.) On top of all that stuff is the mask to selectively apply the degrunge.

Do this a second time (not shown) for the finer textures just like I did in Photoshop. 11 layers total.

BTW, I actually intentionally left in the edge of the crease near mid-sleave just because a real sleave needs to have at least one bend in it.

Bart

bart,

hmm, got some problems with this. one, i cant input 64/1/192. Paint Shop Pro xi wont let me make the center one less than the left one. and two, when you make your mask, are you making it on the degrunge layer in the group or on the group as a whole on the group icon?

bart,

hmm, got some problems with this. one, i cant input 64/1/192. Paint Shop Pro xi wont let me make the center one less than the left one. and two, when you make your mask, are you making it on the degrunge layer in the group or on the group as a whole on the group icon?

The center levels slider on PSPX (and photoshop) is in gamma units. So the center (default) position is 1. The low and high limites are in digitizer level units. Anyway, forget about the center one. Just move the low and high sliders to 64 and 192 respectively.

In PSPX, it automatically makes a group when you create a mask. In my case I selected the "inverse grunge" layer in the layer palette, right mouse click and select "new mask layer->hide all". This creates a group and puts the mask and inverse grunge layer into the group. Then add a copy of the background and a levels layer into the group as shown.

Bart

bart,

thank you! i struggled and struggled with this one and it kept coming up wrong. i finally realized i was subtracting the original from the blurred, rather than the other way around and then it came out right. very easy to do in Paint Shop Pro. lol.

i only did one pass. here's my result now (thanks to you!):