Hello forum, I'm new, I had no idea there was a site like this. I trolled for only 2 days before starting this post. I've been trying to color correct this photo and even after finding some tutorials about similar problems, I am having a hard time getting this kid's skin color correct or at least closer to natural. I'm a Graphic Designer who' uses the CS3 suite regularly but photo-retouching is fairly confusing to me: Blank Layers, Unsharp Masks, Gaussian Blurs, what?!

A family friend approached me with the request to restore this photo, and after spending a solid 5 hours with very little results, I realize I need an expert's help. (The story behind the pic: apparently her son had Multiple Schlerosis and was bound to this wheel chair, less than a month after this picture was taken he suffered a stroke and has never been as lucid. He's in his thirties now, so I guess this pic is about 20 years old.)

If any of you Photoshop Gods would like to try their hand at this, please do! Also guys, my original file is 25 inches wide at 300dpi (way too big to post at orig size) so I'd really love for you to let me know the steps you took to achieve your results so that I can duplicate them with the larger image. I plan on printing this for the boy's mother at 13x19 inches on my Epson R1800.

Photoshop. I read some complaint posts about trollers like me just wanting to "use" the forum without appreciation, so I dunno if this is cool or not BUT if one of you experts can help me and walk me thru some techniques on improving this image, I'd like to send you a custom print of any image you want at 13x19 on SemiGloss Professional Ink Jet paper. Like I posted earlier, I own an R1800 that produces amazing prints and I thought it might be a good "thank you" for anyone that has an image they want printed but no access to a pro-quality printer. After I get some of your sage advice, email me your image and an address to send it to and I promise I will send it ASAP. Anyone can email me at "ian.iorio @ gmail.com". I am printing only one print for one person, whoever ends up being the most understandable tutor with the best results.

Thanks so much for reading, thanks so much MORE for helping!
Marcus

not perfect didnt take much time used adjustment layers to even out the border some painted on new layer set to color blending mode. selected highlights copied to new layer set to multiply (used 2 layers) came up with this, hope you like

I would say that what you have done so far is pretty good. I would mask out the border, so your adjustments don't throw off the edges so much. From what I can see, the reason that you are having so much trouble finding the colors in the child's face is, there isn't much color information left. If you put a marquee around just the face and add a levels adjustment layer, you can look at the histogram for just the face. You will notice, it is in an extremely small area. Sometimes what is needed for something like this, is to just recolor the area. A good place to start would be to sample the color on the other child's face with the eyedropper tool, so that your foreground color is set to that color. Select the other child's face and add a hue/saturation layer and click the colorize button. This will colorize the face, starting with the selected foreground color.

If I had a better quality image, I might be able to help you more. If you don't have a place where you can post it, PM me and I can provide a place for you to put it.

I've uploaded a huge image for you guys to mess with if they'd like. It can be found at http://www.williams-england.com/graphics/fingerprints/db2.jpg

The file i started editing can be found at http://www.williams-england.com/graphics/fingerprints/db2a.jpg


Dave.Cox, I haven't had a chance to try out your suggestion, but I will be trying it out soon, I will keep you updated. It sounds pretty solid, thanks.

Unimatrix, what did you mean by "selected highlights copied to new layer"? How did you select the highlights? Would it be helpful to select the highlights, isolate them on a new layer, and edit them before merging it back with the original?

I took a look at the image you had already started on and took screenshots as I worked to give you a visual step by step (I'm not that great at explaining things in type heh). The image detail in the boy's face is very washed out but I feel that your full resolution version may have enough detail there still. I cropped away the edges so they wouldn't throw off my adjustments...your main concern was skin tone anyway. I duplicated the image layer, changed the blending mode on the duplicate layer to multiply and adjusted the opacity of this layer to my liking. I did some levels adjustments...mostly setting a neutral grey point (I used the chair wheel as my sample) to try to get the colour a little more even all round. I ended up with a slight magenta shift, further levels tweaking didn't improve it any without mucking up my skin tones alot, so I added a green photo filter adjustment layer at about 10-15% made a difference to the magenta shift and I masked out the photo filter's effect on the boy's skin on that adjustment layer's mask. You should get a much nicer slightly more vibrant colour result than I have here... saving images for web does trash the colour a bit. I hope I given you some useful ideas:idea:

If you are using photoshop go to the channels pallet and control click (for pc) or command click (for mac) on the rgb layer this selects the highlights. switch back to the layers pallet and control/command J to copy the selected area to a new layer change blending modes to suit your taste. if not dark enough duplicate until satisfied if to dark play with the opacity of the different layers till satisfied.

I chose the brownish color for what appear to be logs to me. I see most of the other posts have used red. Just not sure what some of the other colors are.

dc

my understanding is that yellow inks go off long before others, might explain the red tones in the outer frame, I also get a more brown/orange cast from the logs

Great job everybody! :thumbsup:

Marcus,

first of all, welcome to RetouchPRO!!! :pleased:

Dave and Littlecoo gave you very good tips for restoring this image... but I pressed the 'easy button' ... meaning, instead of sweating blood trying to match the two parts of the picture, (fairly 'normal' border and incredibly faded center), I started by cropping the image along the lines of the frame since, IMO, the center part is what the parents of this poor boy wish to look at and remember... (actually I cropped according to the printing size you posted 13x19, so, something had to be sacrificed).

For the restoration I even threw the kitchen sin in .... but I'll gladly post a detailed explanation if you are interested. :)

Oh MY, FLORA! Amazing work as usual, is it just you or can I get oe of those "easy buttons" ? :) If you don't mind, please post in exhausting detail an explanation of your methods of retrieving the color once lost in this picture. I am particularly interested because none of the other Photoshoppers found a "red stripe" next to the "blue "stripes" in the boy's costume.

I'm running out of the door right now, late for work, but I can't wait to start working on this photo again tonight. the patrons of this site (especially you, Flora) have renewed my hopes of bringing the Life back to this photo. I will post my results soon!

I thought I had a pretty good version, and was working on the 'recipe' to get there. After seeing Flora's, I gave up on it all. FanTAStic job, Flora!

<C>

Somehow I never got back to this one until now. Excellent job Flora! As usual in Photoshop, there are always more than one way to approach a problem.:grin:

Levels adjustments, cloning and curves. Also airbrushed boys striped gown.

Here is my finished (?) product. Can someone explain to me what Curves are in Photoshop and what they're used for in terms of photo-restoration? I too cropped the image so that I would not have to deal with the less faded borders. I isolated the boy's skin, mouth, and eyes individually and made levels adjustments to their layers and hue/saturation layers also. I cloned out all the mistakes in the backdrop and attempted to match the whole image's color scheme using the "blue wall" that was unfaded as a guide (in a separate color reference file). I figured, if I can get those two blues to look alike, maybe all the other colors would be indicative of what the image used to look like. What do you guys think? CS3 is truly awesome, I didn't know much about restoration before visiting this site and now I feel almost competent!

Here are my results:
Thank you Flora, Dave.Cox, unimatrix, Lurch, cassidy, LittleCoo, and albatrosss. Is there anything else I should do to this pic? :)

Hi Marcus

Welcome to Retouch Pro

Here are my two attempts.

The first was the difficult one where I matched the faded area to the borders

The second one was much easier (and as already mentioned, gives a much better image)

Run Image > Adjust > Equalize in the Red Channel
Run Image > Adjust > Equalize in the Green Channel
Run Image > Adjust > Equalize in the Blue Channel
Dupe the results and set blending mode to multiply (applied selectively)
Crop as Required
And with a little bit of tweaking gives a pretty acceptable result.

I also removed the sign behind him.

Ken

Can someone explain to me what Curves are in Photoshop and what they're used for in terms of photo-restoration?

Curves are adjustments much like the level adjustments, except much more powerful. With level adjustments, you can adjust white and black slider, and also the midpoint slider. This basicall defines a ramp, that photoshop uses to make the adjustment. The 3 sliders are the beginning, end and 50% point on the ramp. With curves, not only can you access these 3 points, but every other point on the ramp. This gives you much more control over the adjustment.

Hi,

Marcus, lurch, Dave,

Thank you so much for your kindness!!! :pleased:

Marcus,

I think you did a pretty good job with this picture! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

You might try to add tone and definition and 3D feeling to the boy's face ... (Attachment 1).

Working on your finished product, (hope you don't mind..) I simply used a Levels Adjustment Layer for that... (values in Attachment 2)

After seeing your work I don't think you really need my 'how to' ... but, as Dave pointed out, in Photoshop, there are always more than one way to approach a problem... so.. here is what I did:



First I minimized the cyan/green cast using a Levels Adjustment Layer to set the Grey Point in an area that, IMO, should have been 'neutral' (Attachment 3)
Merged Visible (**)
Used Image>Adjustment>Shadow/Highlight (available from Photoshop CS onwards) to bring back Details in the faded lighter areas. I used a Layer Mask to 'protect' the original darker areas. (Attachment 4)


From this point I worked on selected areas:

*Whenever possible I always work with Adjustment Layers.*

FACE AND HANDS

Levels or Curves to improve contrast, tone and/or definition.
Selective Colors, Hue/Saturation to improve/fix colours
Blur Tool (20% Strength) to smooth out skin in smaller areas.

BACKGROUND HUT

Basically the same as for Face and Hands.
Blank Layers set to: Lighten, Darken, Color, Soft Light

For this I use 'my' Blank Layer set to... technique (tutorial here (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=206) ... just scroll down the page to BLANK/EMPTY LAYERS SET TO....)

CLOTHING

Exactly the same as described above...

For the stripes, I 'cheated' ... :D ... during the restoration work, most of the time I thought the stripes were only blue/cyan... but at a certain point I saw something reddish as well ... that's when I decided to use both colours. I used A blank Layer set to Color and with a soft Brush (30-50% Opacity) I carefully painted over the stripes.


(**) Merge Visible:
Keeping the Alt key pressed, open your Layers Palette's Menu and, click on 'Merge Visible'.

A new Layer containing all your corrections will be created on top of all the other Layers ....

This procedure enables you to carry on with your restoration from your advanced point... without losing any of the previous steps/Layers... thus giving you the possibility to retrace your steps and making changes wherever necessary.... even after you've 'finished' the job....[/B]

As for the Curves Can someone explain to me what Curves are in Photoshop and what they're used for in terms of photo-restoration? ... in addition to what Dave said, quoting from the Gurusnetwork this is what they are used for

* Adjust the over-all contrast or tonal range
* Adjust the LOCAL contrast or tonal range
* Adjust the COLOR

and here (http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorial/curves/1/) is an excellent Tutorial on "Introduction to the Curves Command".

Hope this helps....