I guess I started on a simple one but I had to start somewhere as well.
Thirty year old pic of my daughter.
repaired color using levels and channels
Cloning and healing on the faded, damaged and dusty parts.
losts of work on the eyes.
softened skin using an action I wrote to simulate Carl Zeiss' softar filter.
Your thoughts are most welcome as I would like to be adding restoration services to the studio in the near future and need to know what I'm doing right and wrong.
Thanks
Els

Hi Els. Welcome aboard. You're soft filter action seems to give a nice effect. Photos like yours can be a bit of a challenge in that the flash causes large variations in the skin tone, parts seem too red others too yellow. My impression is that it has an overall red cast. Her prop is white and should be close to neutral. As well, I think the backdrop was probably white and with some light fall off, comes off a grey which again should be neutral. After neutralizing these I thought her skin was a bit high in cyan and tried to reduce a bit. I know it's a bit subjective but here's what I came up with.

Cheers
Dave

Hey Duv,
Thanks for the welcome and the rendition. I like the results but for her hair color. Is there a way to achieve this and maintain the hair color from mine as it really is her natural color?
I have had a prob with the skin tones esp the purple cast on her upper left arm and the green on her right temple.
Thanks for the help.
Els.

I think the only way around it Els is with selective coloring. That's often the problem with color correction, you fix one area only to mess up another. A lot of people including Flora who's one of our best have a lot of success with Selective Colors under Layers: Adjustments. Let me know how it goes. By the way hope you had a nice Christmas.

Cheers
Dave

Played around a little more. Made a rough selection of hair then used Color Range to select more precisely. Inverted and balanced background to about 188 R,G and B. Flattened image and changed to CMYK (because I haven't a clue how to balance skin tones in RGB) Cyan: 58% input/44% output Yellow: 54% input 58% output Black 62% input 48% output Flattened then back to RGB. Color sampled from right hand and painted in color mode 60% the left arm and hands. Sampled cheek and painted down from the temple on both sides of the face. Not sure if it's getting closer but here it is.

Cheers
Dave

Both of you have done a good job, the only thing that really caught my eye as not being right is her eyes seem too white, might just be me, but it's the first thing I noticed.

Hi Els.

I thought I'd give this a try. The soft effect filter is nice, but the color was not looking natual.

I adjusted Levels for each RGB channel to manage the color, then did the same with Curves. Also used the color balance, and tried a bit of color replacement (lowered saturation, adjusted hue) to lower the intensity of the purple in her lips. Finally, went back to Curves and did a WP and BP adjustment.

Now it seem that her eyes are more green than blue! Is this possibly correct?

Regards,

mcmurma

Els a nice first try. I agree that the soft filter looks nice, but the whites of the eyes are too white to the point that they are obvious and make the eyes look flat. The key to a good retouching is making it difficult for anyone to tell what you did.

I gave it a quick go, just doing a bit of color correction. First I did a basic levels correction readjusting the black and white eye droppers. There was still a obvious color cast so I tried a selective color adjustment layer focusing on reducing the magenta color cast. I played around with most of the colors by just visual adjusting the sliders.

Here's what I came up with:
Levels on all channels
Replaced background
Color replace on lips
Unsharp 10/50 for contrast
Highpass on duplicate layer set at soften mode to sharpen
That's about it, might have adjusted variations a little?

This child is such an adorable little girl, I couldn't resist trying to work on her picture as well.

I tried selective color with less than desired results and ended up using the old standby, hue/sat. When (at least on my monitor) she had lost the magenta cast, I saved the file and then ran it through Neat Image to clean it up just a bit before saving for the web.

Duv, your skin colors in the second post are the best. Good going.

Hi Elsdon, just like Janet, I could'nt resist having a go with this lovely picture.
I colour corrected with levels, then created new colour blend layers and painted in colour to background and girls skin. Then cloned out blemishes. Then ran through Neat Image, lastly copied to new layer, sharpened using USM, applied hide all layer mask and painted in sharpness to eyes and brows using soft white brush.

Janet. Thank you for the compliment. I was trying to adjust Els corrected copy but feel the end result left the girl looking doll like. I'm beginning to question the value of a soft filter on a young girl. If you are trying to create a dreamlike quality, that's one thing but aren't soft filters generally used for adults and seniors to help conceal the "ravages" of age?
I'm also questioning traditional color correction protocol, at least on this pic. Whether I corrected by Levels, By the numbers, White Point, whatever..I couldn't find enough left over in Curves to properly balance out the skin. So I worked somewhat in reverse and first concentrated on the skin tone. Working with Levels and Info, I adjusted until I got what I think is reasonable skin tone: 10% Cyan 28% Magenta 32% Yellow 1% Black. Of course it depends where you take your reading. Once you have the skin tone and hopefully hair color that is close to Els rendition, then you can focus on background, foreground and clothes. Any thoughts?

Cheers
Dave

Wow, You guys rock!!! :bow: :bow: :bow:
There is not one in the group that I would turn down if I were a customer.
I do know that I went overboard on the whites of her eyes but I can fix that as I did cleverly save the pic as a psd as well. I don't generally mess with whites ever and don't know what compelled me to that this time.
I now have an armory of ways to adjust the color as well as the knowledge that I have sooooooo much to learn.
As for the softening I guess I give everything at least of touch of "softar" even my wildlife stuff, but Duv you are right, I generally safe the strong stuff for just that or for glamor shots.
Thanks again guys, I really do appreciate it.
Els