It is an old picture of my sister , and it is her favorite, and she does not know that I have this photo... :) I am going to try as well....help me with ideas....thanks :)

I tried to correct the focus, a little sharpening and color adjustment. Cropped the image. Added a plant as the camera held by the person sitting in the chair drew away from the image.

dc

I would keep the foreground & the background out of focus. High pass filter + Byro’s sharpening action, I would use on your sister (masking necessary). It’s up to your taste to keeping or replacing the environment. Some curves adjustments to bring the colors back.

tricky image. dark, blurry and some dust and whatnot to clean up. plus, the camera is sort of in the way there.

i like the idea of cropping, but that's going to be up to you. dc did and chillin didnt. so, take your pick there. not sure i like the addition of the plant, though. i'd just remove the camera if not the whole person. but, if you want image integrity, then chillin's would be the way to go.

both did a very good job on the face, and that's the real focus of the image. and i'd like to know more of the details on what you did there, chillin.

and, if you're really feeling adventurous, you could do multiple images, no crop, full body crop (leaving out a lot of the background), and a head and shoulders crop. and it's that last one that would make it adventurous. you'd need detail.

i'd also recommend, before doing anything else, at least doubling the image size. you'll tend to get smoother transitions in things like cloning and other fine adjustments.

Here is my take on this pic. Curves adjusted, sharpened and a bit of touch up on the noise. I am still entering the entry level in photo retouching. so just guide me if I can do any more to make it better. thanks a ton.

http://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i902944_lilbrin.jpg (http://www.imagehosting.com)

My idea on how to present your picture

Granny

pranavy, welcome to RP.

well, you've lightened it up. that's good. but you've got a lot of 'noise' there to clean up yet. a clone tool does wonders on those.

grannysdc, very nice. you found more detail in those jammy tops than i did.

Thanks Craig,
I was experimenting with Gaussian Blur sharpening using darkening and lightening layers..

I found this site (RetouchPRO) just after I got PS7.. and this has been my favorite site for learning to use this tool.. All questions that I have had thus far have been answered by the tutorials or a simple search on "RetouchPRO".. along with the comprehensive help always provided by your regular members when they reply to a post..

Y'ALL are a great bunch of people!

Thanks for being here...

Granny

Here is my contribution. Obviously it could be much better if the original was at a higher resolution. Everything else was pretty straight forward though.
Joe

www.joegolling.com (http://www.joegolling.com)

grannysdc, guassian blurring sharpening? isnt that a bit contradictory? care to elaborate on that technique?

jgolling, welcome to RP.

nice job of lightening things. a little grainy yet and a little burry yet. but a big improvement overall.

Thanks Craig,
I try not to enhance the focus too much on any image, (unless its an intentional blur) with the goal in mind of not letting it start to look like something other than a photo. There are a lot of filters out there, but i've found very few of them that keep the feel of an actual photograph. Smoothing out grain is also a technique that betrays the restorer's presence on an image... something that I always felt went against the idea of restoration. I guess thats just my aesthetic though,
Thanks again,
Joe

grannysdc, guassian blurring sharpening? isn't that a bit contradictory? care to elaborate on that technique?

I found this while surfing; when I saw the name of the author I figured it must be OK to try...

Sharpening using Gaussian Blur, by Dan Margulis in an issue of Photoshop User magazine (March of year ?):

1. Open the image that needs sharpening.

2. Make a duplicate copy of this image and call it "For Darkening".

3. Add two duplicate layers to the "For Darkening" image and then save as a layered psd file called "For Lightening".

4. Apply a Gaussian Blur of 1.5 pixels to the top layer of "For Lightening" (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur).

5. Change the blend mode of the second layer to Darken.

6. Change the blend mode of the third layer to Difference.

7. Flatten the image (Layer > Flatten Image).

8. Add two duplicate layers (press CTRL and J twice).

9. Flatten the image and save it.

10. Return to the image called "For Darkening".

11. Apply a Gaussian Blur of 2.0 to the second layer.

12. Set the blend mode of the second layer to Lighten.

13. Change the blend mode of the top layer to Difference.

14. Flatten the image.

15. Invert the image (Filter > Adjustments > Invert).

16. Add two duplicate layers and set the blend mode of each to Multiply.

17. Flatten the image and then save. Copy the image to the clipboard (Select > All then Edit > Copy).

18. Paste the "For Darkening" image on top of the original copy of the image.

19. Set the blend mode to multiply.

20. Copy the "For Lightening" image to the clipboard and paste it on top of these two layers.

21. Set the layer blend mode to Screen.

22. If necessary, adjust the opacity of each layer.

23. Flatten the image and save.

It was fun to try and I probably will keep it in the arsenal of tools and techniques I am building..

pranavy, welcome to RetouchPRO.

well, you've lightened it up. that's good. but you've got a lot of 'noise' there to clean up yet. a clone tool does wonders on those.

Thanks Craig for your kind advice. My next thing to practice is cloning only. I need to learn it better yet. You can expect better work from me in coming days :)

jgolling, yes, i'm all too guilty of over-sharpening, so i understand. however, there is a lot of grain in that image. a little noise reduction might be good.

granny, thanks :)

pranavy, cloning and cloning well is well worth the practice. it's one of the main restoration tools.

i've been playing with this one too. i didnt get near the detail in the top as granny (again, nicely done on that), but i'm somewhat pleased with the rest.

i cropped the image to start cloned out the camera and person. there was a ton of speck cleanup and other artifacting. this was done with clone, airbrush and push (smudge). i used psp's red eye removal tool to rebuild the eyes a bit and a lot of work around the eyes was done with push.

and though i've been working on this over several days, i think i recall lightening things up with brightness/contrast layer, a clarify filter and maybe even a curves.

sorry for not having more detail on the workflow, but when i work on these a little bit over several days, the previous workflow gets lost when i save and quit. but, it's mostly my standard fare in workflows... just maybe a bit more detail work than normal.