I think I really suck at this! I have worked on this photo for the better part of a day, and have had no real success. This is a scanned image from my Mom's old collection. I really wanted to fix it up and present to family at Christmas, but can't seem to get it right. There is something "off" about the colors, no matter what I do. I've tried levels adjustments, channel mixers, and finally settled for some auto adjustments because it was just as good as anything I could do! Anyway, any help or suggestions would be appreciated. I have learned so much from this site, but this may be way beyond my capabilities. By the way, isn't the baby in the pic just precious? ;-) Here is link to full size pic if you'd like. Thanks, Sue

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/sooznooz/5ofus.jpg

Hi Sue, welcome
you have a good start. For the color you may have to adjust different areas separately, to get the colors the way you want them.
I'll try to work on it later.
cathy

Hi Sooz, I wanted to give this picture a try. I just worked with the threshold adj. layer to find the true b&w levels and applied a levels layer and then a little adjusting to the individual channels while in the levels adj. layer, from there did neat image. It needs a lot more work, but, I've got to start cooking dinner now. :)

Since your main concern here at the start is color I approached this by trying to determine what colors we know for sure and try to get them right. Grass is green, lilacs are lilac Camel hair is, well, camel colored.
Beautiful picture by the way, and quite a challenge for such a simple fix (at least for me). Seems to have been taken on a cloudy day, toward sunset, with the flash just at it’s limit for distance. Auto color did a nice job on the color but wanted to black out the faces. I think the nice man at the photo lab blew everything out in an effort to recover the faces in the original image.
Anyway, no sense going over everything as it was just a matter of trial and error with color. I did overlay an inverted color layer from a point color sample of the boys shirt to take away the cast. I used a blend layer on color burn and then masked it out and painted it back in over the slacks and green of the lilacs. At the end I added a dark red filter to the sky with the gradient tool just so the sky wasn’t so blown out.

Hi Sue. Using Cathy's suggestion I added a Color Balance adjustment layer and adjusted the sliders until the skin started to look normal. Then I inverted the mask to black and brushed over the skin only. Then I added another Color Balance adj layer and got the green grass to look better, then inverted that mask to black and brushed over the grass only. You could continue this for each color area you want to adjust. You could try this method anyway to see how it looks.

Diana

Hi there

I used curves and selective color layers... then a few color layers to even out colors.

Butch

Wow...some great work there. Better than I have been able to manage for sure. Diana, I don't think yours got posted....I would love to see it.

Susie, yours is looking great...the skin tones are coming back.

Crazyfly, you might be right about the time of day and/or clouds. It was taken in Texas...I wonder if there was a tornado warning! lol Everything has that greenish cast in my original but it's much better in yours.

Davis I love what you did with this. The colors really pop. I am surprised that nobody repainted the yellow house!! My mom always preferred white and off-white, so am always startled when I see this yellow house. Thanks so much for your work!! Sue

Since it's 1 AM I did a fast job just to see what worked.

I copied the blue channel to the red and then adjusted the RGB levels.

Then made selections of various parts of the image (you can see the sloppiness on the roof) and used a Hue Saturation and Curves to adjust color

Ran an unsharp filter which really didn't help that much.

I would guess that spending a bit of time on this photo could make it pretty decent.

One more try

Butch

Thanks Butch....for repainting the house! ;-) Good job!
Albatross, yours seems to come closest so far to getting rid of the gloomy tone of the picture. I will try your method to see if I can get it to work. Maybe just getting some color into the sky is part of it. Thanks for the ideas!
Sue

Played around with it again this AM and came up with the following

Thanks albatross. These just keep getting better. This one seems to have the overall color in it, or at least what seems "true" to me. I like it! Thanks!

Albatrosss,
I like your second version, too. I know this is probably a dumb question, but what exactly do you mean by copying the blue channel to the red? My "channel" knowledge is a bit lacking. Thanks!

Diana

You're welcome.

Albatrosss,
I like your second version, too. I know this is probably a dumb question, but what exactly do you mean by copying the blue channel to the red? My "channel" knowledge is a bit lacking. Thanks!

Diana

Diane,

Forget copying the channel. I believe the 2nd photo is better than the first and I did not copy the channel. If you would like me to elaborate on copying a channel and substituting it for another let me know.

Thanks Albatross, I'd love to know about the channel copying. I've tried to use channels for color fixes, but it has me confused most of the time.

im glad I found this site.Its very informitive.Ive played with a few pictures,trying to change them. results were nothing to write home about.I know ill learn more from here.thanks karen

P.S.

Oops! I hope I didn't hijack your thread, Sue.

Diana

Thanks Albatross, I'd love to know about the channel copying. I've tried to use channels for color fixes, but it has me confused most of the time.

Try this tutorial. It uses LAB but there are others that use RGB. Try this one. If you would like to use RGB instead of LAB I'll walk you through it.

Make sure you read the very last sentence of the tutorial. Once the channel is substituted you still have to work on the color.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=23

1. duplicate background.

2. levels (set on contrast)

3. usm 2/100/5

4. digital camera noise removal (medium settings)

5. clone on a separate blank layer

6. push on a separate blank layer

7. airbrush on a separate blank layer

8. selected sky and put to own layer

9. fill sky

10. paint clouds in on sky

11. gausian blur sky

12. another fill on sky in paint area (low opacity)

13. made layer group of sky and added brightness/contrast adjustement layer

14. some final little touches on faces.

Thanks Albatrosss. I'm using that tutorial right now. Thanks for the info, and even if you found it to be not the best method for this particular picture, I'm sure Sue and everybody else will be able to use it for other images. Thanks again!

Diana

LOL....I guess you did cause it's moved. But that's okay. I can track ya down! (How did that happen?)

Sue


P.S.

Oops! I hope I didn't hijack your thread, Sue.

Diana

Beautiful job Craig, thanks for all the details. Very helpful!

Sue

LOL....I guess you did cause it's moved. But that's okay. I can track ya down! (How did that happen?)

Sue


It Moved? Uh oh - I'm confused. :ditsy:

Diana

thanks, sooznooz :)

the faces could stand some more work. they're a bit pasty and not lit quite right, but it was late last night and i wanted to post it before going to bed, so, there ya go... a 'rush' job :)