This is my 1st attempt to restore a photo.
I adjusted the colours and masked the people and Gaussian blured the background but now the edges of the people have a ghost effect, how could this be done differently??
Would there be any way to sharpen the photo a little more??

Original photo..

I'll try this again

This is what I've done so far

This is the effect I'm talking about

Hi Jarviz - and welcome to RetouchPRO!! (I see you posted once before, but I'm pretty sure I didn't say "hi" then.) :D

We had a thread (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4500) just recently on this exact problem. You may find this post (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=37779#post37779) particularly helpful.

Jeanie

Jeanie. I read the tutorial and tried to seperate the foreground and back ground in Photoshop 7. I tried every selection tool and the extraction tool and finally used the magnetic lasso. It cut off a portion of the face. One do you know a better way of subject selection.

Second it tells you to transform scale to larger then cut out, but it does not cover it so I had to clone around cut out to cover. Is there a better way.

The attached is my try at it, I hit it also with an unsharp mask (People selectio )to bring up more detail

Give me your opinions.

Sorry Jarviz, I get nuts about new tech.

Phili1, sometimes there just isn't an "easy" way to cut out a subject. The magnetic lasso can be useful, but almost always needs further "clean-up" by the regular lasso or polygonal lasso. (You know that holding SHIFT down while using any lasso tool will ADD to the selection and holding ALT will SUBTRACT from the selection, right?) If you prefer to "paint" a mask rather than draw a line for a selection, you can switch into QuickMask mode and paint the mask/selection instead.

As far as your transform question, what exactly were you transforming - the background, the subject or the selection? I think what Paul suggested transforming in that thread was the subject which had been cut out and copied to it's own layer. However, later on, Richard reminded us that resizing the subject would cause interpolation and compromise the clarity. So, I would try Richard's suggestion of copying both the subject and the image background (without the subject) to their own layers - then blurring the image background layer as desired.

From your example, I'm wondering if you transformed the background instead of the subject? For example, I see two pinky fingers (one blurred) on the hand on the shoulder.

If I haven't answered your questions, please ask again.

Jeanie

Jarviz,

I will leave it to others with more knowledge give you advice on how to better your result. I just want to say that what you have done so far is impressive.

krw

You did thanks. I did copy each seperatly and blureds the background, but what I found is that even is you transform. scale it larger you have edges that show and you have to clone into the cut out space. anyway at least I know I am not the only one haveing to do all that clean up work.

Hi Jarviz,
I had a quick go at this one ....flinging it between PS & Painter.
....sharpened in PS one copy and another gaussion blurr
then cloned the blurred image onto the sharpened one in Painter.

-Gary

Here we go again with the file ....grrrrr!
-Gary