Hi ya,

Thanx to everyone who's replyed, the help and advice is much appreciated :)
Im still trying to get the photo right, but eventually I'll get there :D

I have another photo I'd like your advice on if you have the time that is.

I've managed to get rid of all the tears and cracks on this photo but, Im having trouble filling in the missing part of the woman's face

any help on this would be great :)

lol you really do pick them dont you:D This is far and above my skill level. I havent had a go yet, examined the channels or anything yet, but from a cursory glance I would think that the information is not there to begin with (so cant be recovered) however, if you can find any source photos to borrow the detail from, that might produce results. the only other way that I can think of, would be to make your own by brushing on the shades and features of the face.


RetouchPro has a vast archive of photos that you could borrow the features/shading from.

I will have a look at this picture, but I am pretty sure its beyond repair and into the realms of artistry - I am not so good with the artistic side of Photoshop (sounds stupid I know). Good luck all.:)

If you could get another photo of the same woman, in approximately the same position, you could probably borrow some features from the other photo to use as restoration material. That's the best I can think of.

Ed

What I would do with this one is firstly ask the client if there is another photo of the lady. It doesn't really matter if it's a similar pose as long as you can see her eyes properly. If you get a photo which shows her eyes you can either "borrow" them from the photo and make they fit by using the transform took playing with the skew, distort and perspective ect until you get a good representation of her eyes. Or you could search through photos you already have or on the internet to find a photo with similar eyes. I feel this is probably the way you will have to go. When you find those similar eyes try to only use parts of them to repair the original eye, not the whole eye as this often is detectable.I use several layers varying in opacity, that way I can delete or adjust the layers at will. Once you have the eyes then start on the nose but remember only use as much as you have to from another photo or you will change the original too much. I have built up a collection of body parts which I use when there is no better way to repair an image. Hope this helps.

Hi all, Here's what I was able to do with the airbrush. I didn't touch the rest of the photo - just did around her nose and eyes.

Margaret

I did it with the clone tool and the paintbrush. It took about 20 minutes.

First, all I did was examine the woman's face. I could guess pretty much what was missing just from looking at where the lines were going. When I look at a face, I know pretty much that the eye will be a fairly even arch, and there is usually a fairly standard spacing between the inside edge of the eye and the bridge of the nose. The shadow that is still visible at the bottom of the nose will lead almost directly to the inner corner of the eye and eyebrow. In this image, all of the information is there to make a fairly educated guess as to where the missing lines need to be placed. All I did was continue the lines that were there with a clone tool set to about 20% opacity, building up gradually, and then smooth/blend any rough edges with a paintbrush set to 10% or less. I did all of this on a new layer so that I could turn the layer on & off frequently to see any odd "jumps" the lines might be making - a bit like a little animation. If the lines started to jump too far away from the original, I erased lightly and re-made the correction.

As a final step, to get the texturing on the new repairs to approximate the original image, I selected the blank areas of my correction layer with the magic wand and then inverted so that only my repaired area was selected. On one more new layer, I filled the selected area with 50% gray and set to overlay. I added a slight bit of noise and then ran a very slight motion blur on it.

Great job Jak. It would have taken me a lot longer to get anywhere near what you did in just 20 mins.

Jak your restoration is superb. Great job. :)
I'm afraid 20 minutes wouldn't even get me started on this one.

I had some time this morning so I finished up this restoration.

I used the airbrush to build the woman's nose and eyes and also airbrushed the creases in the background and on the man's clothes. I used the clone stamp tool on the lady's sweater.

To clear up the fine cracks on both faces, I used a slight gaussian blur and then set that step to the source and used the history brush at darken or lighten to smooth out the wrinkles.

Hope you like what I've done.

I've recently had a couple of jobs where only the airbrush would do, so I've had to practice with it and am pleased with the results.

Margaret

Very nice you lot - I knew there would be a wealth of talent out there :)

Like everyone else, I too would ask for a reference photo. Although, I had a similar case and it didn't work out. The client had a photo of the woman as a child, with a reference photo that was about 50 years older.....I had to wing it.

For this image, I did a number of different things to achieve the look I had in mind.
I did a bit of cut and paste from the good eye and eyebrow.
A bit of dodge and burn, and a little hand painting.

It occured to me while I was doing this, that it wouldn't hurt me to have a better understanding of the human anatomy, and the way light and shadows fall on the face at different angles. I may just do some research on that!

Superb Vicky - you have achieved what was a tough goal, I cant tell that you have ever been here. That really is an achievement:)

I agree with Mike, Vikki - beautiful work!

Just curious since nobody has commented on my work, is this a closed discussion or something and I'm not part of the inner circle??

Margaret

Gosh, I'm sorry Margaret. No, it's certainly not closed. I was working my way backwards through the posts and got slightly sidetracked. I'm sorry...

You've done a wonderful job on it - and you have very good reason to be pleased with the results! I really like the way you've added depth to her nose and made it so delicate and feminine looking right at the bridge.

It just takes me a while sometimes to make all of my comments on things as I often find I suddenly have about 100 zillion things going on here at once.

Did you have a chance at all to look at the other offerings posted? I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on them as well...

Sorry Margaret, I ment to say that I thought you did a great job of filling in the missing information but I get a little lazy at time and don't say what I intend to. So please accept my apologies for forgetting to tell you that you did a wonderful job. :o:

Good to know I wasn't being ignored - it gets lonely over here sometimes.

Yes Jak, I did see all the entries and all were very good. I was able to compare side by side to my own and see where I could do better especially on the eyes.

I look forward to seeing more of your work, I can learn a lot from it,

Margaret

Aww bless Win;) promise I wasnt ignoring you - I had infact commented on yours and the others, whilst it was not an indepth response, it was to acknowledge everyones good work:)

Mike and Jak - .I cant tell that you have ever been here
That's the best compliment, and what I was striving for. Thanks!

In response to Margret.....You and the others have done some fine work on this. To even take on this challenge is worth applause!

Although I'd like to comment and critique on the postings, there are so many, and I just can't find enough time. Also, I am not the best critic. I tend to see the cup half full (including my own). Unless someone specifically asks me to, I try to shy away from critiqing.

I'm always amazed, and admire, those faithful souls here that always find the time

I've nearly finished the photo (see below) but its not as good as what you guys/gals have done but im hoping to get better with ALOT of practice. ;)

I used mainly the clone brush feature in psp to fix the scratches
and missing parts of the picture(i think I went a bit crazy with it over the bridge of the nose.)

The photo is my friends grandparents and she only had this picture of them otherwise I would have copied the features from another photo.

I just need to change the contrast and tone of the picture to try and make some detail stand out in the faces but im not sure how to do it in psp6, I think I could have made the photo better if I'd used photoshop but at the moment I only have the trial version so I cant save or import anything which Is why im using psp.

I love seeing the results of what you've done with other peoples photos who need advice.

This has got to be the BEST forum I've been on so far, everyone is really helpful and friendly.... keep it up :)

Thanx for the help and advice everyone, It's much appreciated.

Michael...

Michael, you've done an excellent job!

As far as the nose problem, if you were to add a bit of darker color along the sides of the nose, it would help define it. I used the airbrush tool in PhotoShop to define the nose a bit. I don't have PSP, so don't know what the equivelent is in PSP.

Keep up the good work,
Margaret

Sorry, forgot to attach my version:

Margaret

I think all of you have done exceptionally well in fixing this image.

I would have refused this one.