This is the only photo I have of myself when I was pregnant. It is a crappy photo and neither a good nor high resolution scan, but unfortunately this digital image is all I have, as the photo itself is lost. Restoring this image is the only hope I have of having any photo of my pregnancy at all...

I don't know if you can use it, but it would mean a lot to me. I haven't been able to do anything with it. I do ok with removing tape or cracks, but this sort of thing... I'm at a loss. I don't even know where to begin.

http://gallery.opalcat.com/albums/OpalCat/15weekspregnant.jpg

Here's a PSP quickie, may be able to do more if you tell me what the hair should look like or the pants etc.

The thing on my head is a bandana (olive green, with no pattern) and the pants are blue sweatpants with the waistband rolled down.

OpalCat, Welcome to RetouchPro! I'm glad you found us. I just read your intro (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=22591#post22591) and perused your website for a while (mostly your photo gallery). You are a very talented artist! I loved your pencil drawings especially.

It seems like this picture would be really good for a challenge - and you'll probably get more people trying it that way too. If you'd like it to be used for a challenge, scan the file so that it is under 5 meg, TIF, RGB, and email them to dnelson@retouchpro.com. (That's Doug - the "all-powerful wizard" of this site who can turn your request into an actual challenge. ;) )

Jeanie

I can't scan it as anything... that digital photo is all I have. If I had the original photo, I'd scan it at a higher res, but I don't :(

Sorry - I see you already told us that in your first post. Well then, the best you have is what we get to work with. Hopefully Doug will be able to discuss it with you - I would send him e-mail regardless (though I'm sure he'll see this too.)

Jeanie

I moved this over to the 'Help Requested' forum. Since the full-rez file fits the upload reqs here, we'll see if someone here can offer some help.

well here's something to look at till all's resolved

or here's the cutout if you want some less extreme

Hi Opal,

Your picture is somewhat salvageable. A big problem is in the channels, especially the red channel. To fix it a little you'll need to play around with the channels. It can be extremely complicated if you're not too familiar with channels, but if you want to, pm me and I'll give you some ideas.

Mig

Well, I spent way more time on this than I should have, but once I got started, I just kept going. This isn't completely finished, but hopefully it'll get you started. I think Mig's work on the face is better than what I've accomplished, but perhaps you could combine our two techniques to get what you want. Obviously, the floor is still a mess and I have no idea what color it should actually be - that's just the color it came out when I was done fiddling with adjustment layers.

Having not seen your attempts, perhaps you've already gotten this far and still aren't happy with it. But, hopefully at least some of what I've done will be useful to you. That said, here's what I did:

1. I ran the image through Neat Image (http://www.neatimage.com/) in an attempt to remove the noise and JPG artifacts. Perhaps I could have used a slightly stronger filter (based on my final result - esp. the face), but I was afraid of losing detail.

Then in PS7:
2. Levels->Auto Color. This removed a lot of the red, but certainly not all of it.

3. Looked at the individual RGB channels - the red channel was a mess. So, I copied the green channel to the red channel. This caused a slight color cast, but that was correctable with adjustment layers.

4. It seemed that an overall color correction was not going to be possible though - esp. since you said that the pants were blue and the bandana was green. So, I had to make some selections: I selected you first and copied to a new layer. Then, made separate selections of the pants and bandana.

5. Then I started applying adjustment layers all over the place. I've attached a screenshot of my layers palette so that you can see everything. Since most of the adjustments were curves, I'm not sure how to list those in detail.

6. Went back to the background layer, used curves and hue/saturation adjustment layers on the floor to get it to a point where at least it wasn't glaring.

7. Filled the rest of the background with a circular gradient fill, then added a slight "film grain" artistic filter.

8. Added a drop shadow to you so that it didn't look like you were completely cut out.

9. Copied the layer with you cut out and moved it to the top of the stack. Applied the High Pass filter at a setting of 2 or 3, then changed the blend mode to overlay. This helped sharpen some, though I though a little too much on the forehead and cheeks, so I used a layer mask to erase the effect from those areas.

10. Used the burn tool on the first cutout layer to reduce the hightlights affecting the face in strange ways.

11. Used the clone and healing tool for some dust spots, but obviously not all.

12. Merged all of the layers and realized that I still didn't like the way the face looked - too yellow and not enough contrast, so I added a curves adjustment layer to just a face selection.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but I haven't yet figured out how to give specifics with curves adjustments. With most of the curves adjustments, I adjusted individual channels in addition to the RGB channel - trying to get rid of the color casts. In some cases I was successful and in others I wasn't.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Jeanie

I couldn't resist giving this a try.

To adjust the color, using PS 7 I used the midtone eye dropper in levels and clicked on her hair and then ran Images/adjustments/Auto Color. This seemed to get the color pretty close. I then used Auto levels.

I used the healing brush to clean up dust and scratches and then tried the Poloroid Dust and Scratches plug-in that Doug recently posted a link for to minimize the noise.

The hat, slacks, and carpet were over painted on seperate layers with the blending mode set to multiply. Each layer was then adjusted using the opacity slider.

I defined her nose slightly with the pencil tool which I blurred with
with the blur tool to make less obvious.

Jim

Heh. It isn't the floor. Actually I was standing on the couch, because I wanted my tummy against a light background. Hehe!!

I really appreciate the work that everyone has done!! I'm amazed. I tried messing with the channels but I couldn't get rid of that glaring stripe to save my life!

The couch!! Well, that explains why it looks so weird as a floor! ;) So, what color is/was the couch? ;)

As for the glaring stripe - do you mean the one on your face or the one on the shirt (or both)? I didn't work on the one on the shirt (obviously), but would probably try to attack it with a combination of the burn tool and clone tool - or perhaps I'd try the new PS7 healing tool, though I'm not sure it would work in this case.

Jeanie

couch is black

I think it's one stripe that covers both... and it's EVIL!

Hi OpalCat!

This is definitely a case of "too late the hero!...:D " but here is what I managed to do with your picture...

P.S. Sorry I read about the original colours only now.. :depressed

The problem with the original is mostly in the red channel
"I think it's one stripe that covers both... and it's EVIL!"
and there's not much that can really fix the picture to make it look really, really good. Seems no one has mentioned that a good strategy is to use the red channel to get rid of the problem area to the point where at least the evil stripe matches the other areas of the picture.
Here's a copy of the red channel after it's been put to drastic curves and some blurring. You can do this yourself by dragging the red channel down to the page icon at the bottom of the channels pallette, then play with the this duplicate red channel with curves or levels and filters, like maximum and gausian blur.
Then load this channel as a selection, go to apply image and start playing around in multiply mode at about 50% opacity using the blue or gree channel. A less complicated way once you activate the selection is to fix it with more curves and other image manipulation.
You'll see a big difference.

Mig

Flora's version is very good. The only thing missing is what's described above. Here's her version after being treated with this process. It's not that good even, but the picture's in bad shape and I don't think it can be salvaged to the point where it can be made to look really good. If anyone figures out a way I'd like to know.
Note the selection was inverted and the picture was manipulated on the "other" side of the selection as well.
A duplicate layer was added above and put in screen mode at about 20%.

I guess what I'm saying is look in the channels for something to use to your advantage. People seem to be having difficulty with this picture because they're missing the obvious. It shouldn't be that complicated. You have to use the bad channel to fix it. It's a good picture of a pregnant woman, but it's a bad picture from our point of view.

Mig

Mig - thanks for pointing out the channel angle. I usually check the channels - don't know why I didn't in this case, since it seems so obvious now. I hadn't ever thought of using the bad channel to create a selection though. Thanks for that insight. I've added it to my list of "tricks".

Jeanie

Wow, thanks for everything you all have done! I now have something better than what I started with, and that is wonderful :) :) :)