I'd like to see how others would approach fixing this picture. WedDayOrig is the original picture. WedDay1 is just a cleaned up version without a lot of color adjustment. The last one with the long file name ending with the word FINAL I think is too sharpened and pixelated. I love to see and hear how some of you would fix this picture. Thank you so much! Sylvia

Hi AtlanaAnna,

It's hard to tell because all 3 samples are different sizes and different angles. I agree with you that the 'final' doesn't look final at all, damage shows up on it that was taken care of in the previous example. It also shows damage that was missed in both versions. The second version looks better.

To my eye the two 'worked on' examples don't look like they were done in that order.

I would approach it by scanning in color at 600, possibly trying 16bit to see if I could recover anything in the shadows, then reducing to 8bit and down to 300 if the file size became a burden.

Levels, selective shadow/highlight, noise removal? (can't tell if it's needed with this size jpg), cloning, cleanup, possible selective sharpening (depends on how it looks at this point).

90% of the cleanup of my restorations is done without plugins, cleaning up pixel by pixel.

I'm not sure what I would do with this 'original' since it's about the size of a business card at 300dpi and has jpg compression.

Good luck with it.

Took a shot at this using Photoshop Elements. Added light to shadows which highlighted the pants and dress plus added more light to the building. Also took out defects in the sky by adding more brightness. Lastly, used levels adjustment.

I agree with BillFrey, re-scan in color at a much higher resolution with all the automatic stuff turned off.. then I would ask for permission (if it is not your photo) to crop it something like this

Now this is interesting.... nice colors. You opted to crop out the old house and the woods on the other side. I hadn't considered that.

You're absolutely right about the 2 touched up images. I did the one that isn't super sharpened and a friend did the other.... so, no, they are not progressivly done.

I, too, like to repair damage pixel by pixel. You and I must be detail-oriented personalities. Thanks for the suggestion about rescanning at a higher resolution and then bringing it down.

Some of the other suggestions, I'll have to get my book and read to understand what you're suggesting. I am pre-kindergarten!!! with my skills! Thanks for the help.

Sylvia

Oh, Scooplav, I'm just now seeing your version. I like how you brightened it up. I'm using Photoshop 7. I guess there's a similar way to do the same thing you did. I like that technique.

Sylvia

AtlanaAnna - Glad you liked it. In Elements it is done by: Enhance-> Shadows/Highlights. Since it lightened the surrounding areas of the picture, it gives the impression that less light is hitting both subjects, since that are slightly over exposed, and makes the overall picture look better.