Ok this is my 2nd post to this group. The first one was a plea for help with a really badly damaged old photo.

I thought I would try another really bad one that means a lot to me. This photo is one of me and my cousins. We were all reallly close growing up.

I am attaching the original photo. As you can see it is really washed out.

I'm pretty new at Photoshop. I don't even know "layers" yet. But the main thing I did was to apply the "equalize" command to the photo. The problem was this made the sky alll gray.

To get rid of the gray sky I used the magic erase command. It did a wonderful job of even erasing the gray patches between leaves.

After that I used a lot of dodge and burning.

Ok let me post this and I'll show you what I did.
Doug

Ok here is the photo reworked.

My biggest disappointent is that one person in the photo, the fellow at the top of the ladder, I could not bring out the details of his face. That person is me! :-)

Any suggestions there?

Your comments are welcome.

Thanks,

Doug Roberts

This is a pretty difficult one to restore...even for someone who knows Photoshop really well!

The first thing I notice is that the restoration has far too much contrast. I think you have lost a great deal of detail by pushing the contrast up so much. You might try using a Curves or Levels adjustment, rather than dodge and burn. Ed L has a great tutorial on basic Curves adjustments located here - http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/curves/index.html

Another tut. which may be of interest to you is this one by Jakaleena, which explains Layers in very clear terms - http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/layers/index.html

Another thing to keep in mind is the level of light hitting their faces. You did a great job of bringing the faces out but it looks a little unnatural given the light source (from behind) and level of contrast.

I like the amount of detail you were able to back to the house and the reconstruction of the top of the swingset is very well done.

The details are there. You need a good scan to bring them out. Try and have it scanned on a drum scanner.

I'm not sure a drum scan is going to do much good unless he still has the original transparency...any decent flat-bed, with proper calibration, should bring out all the detail in the print.

Doug,

Hi, you have done a very good job. You have got the look throughout the photo very consistant. I have done some quick layers adjustments to keep it a natural photo look with the detail that is in the photo just to show a different approach.

You should definantly learn layers, jump in and play.

The photo you did looks a little unreal with the clothing being so dark and faces so clear. But it is an excellent job, if that is the look you wanted you kicked _ :) It is pretty to look at with the smoother tones you have created with your technique, without all the noise/grain of the original.

Descriptions are in the name of each layer, with the blending mode.

Working from the background layer;

-First the background layer (did nothing to it)
-Curves to lighten bottom (used gradient to mask to just the bottom)
-Levels layer in screen mode to lighten overall
-Curves to raise contrast in bottom
-Curves to darken to in multiply mode
-Curves in multiply layer duplicated and backed off to 70% opacity
-Curves to raise overall contrast now that all has about the same look
-blank layer in overlay mode, white and black painted at 10% brush opacity to lighten and darken respectively

Do the tutorials and then come back and look at this and it will start to make sense, I promise.

Roger

Thanks for the feed back everyone.

I'm going to rescan this one. I had just used the scaner's "auto" mode before.

I know I did overdo the dodging some on the faces. :-)

I will try using the suggestions to see what I can do. See if I can get this "levels" thing going.

Thanks,

Doug