Hi Everbody
Could someone give me some pointers on how to clean this photo of my Brother up Please.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=16418

Thank You All
Romany

Romany:

There are two main problem areas: the dark underexposed area, and the color shifts. There are many different approaches and the one I took follows:

To tackle the dark areas, select the luminicity (ctrl + alt + ~) for Windows computers, and then invert it (shift + cmd + i). Now copy this selection to a new layer ctrl + j, and set the blending mode to Screen.

For the color shifting problem, add a Color balance layer and add more Cyan and Yellow until you like the color of the skin. (See Carl1)

Then you can a new layer, set its blending mode to Color and select colors to paint his clothes and the sofa.

You can select his eyes and copy them to a new layer and apply a Hue/Saturation layer, and reduce the saturation level which will remove the red from his eyes, and back off the lightness slider until you are satisfied with the tone. (see Carl2)

Lastly (which I did not do) you can attack the scratches and other damage with cloning or the healing brush.

Alan

Ajcutler
Wow, it looks much better than the original i will try to have a go with the cloning tool to clear the marks, thank you also for giving the directions :bigthmb:
Chris

remove noise and sharpen, painted the sofa...Paint with Light actions at www.atncentral.com

Hi everybody,

Great jobs on this picture which isn't as easy to restore as it looked ... :o:

I had a go at it:

I duplicated the background Layer.

Working on the duplicate, I brightened up the image using Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight (PS CS only)..if you work with another version of PS you could use this action (http://www.retouchpro.com/resources/fileinfo.php?id=16) based on the 'Fill Flash' technique.

I used Selective Colors Adjustment Layers to adjust the overall colour and remove the strong 'Magenta' cast first and to selectively correct the skin tones later.

Merged Visible ... the action for merging 'visible' without losing the underlying 'steps' can be downloaded here (http://www.retouchpro.com/resources/fileinfo.php?id=11).

I duplicated the 'merged Layer and reduced the noise using Neat Image (can be downloaded free here (http://www.neatimage.com/download.html) ) after having created a 'surface' mask as described in Mitch's excellent Tutorial (http://tinyurl.com/5pffd).

I used Levels and Curves Adjustment Layers to adjust tone and contrast ...

I used The polaroid Dust&Scratches Filter (can be downloaded free here (http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html) ) to eliminate the 'dust'.

Created 'my' usual variety of empty Layers ( Blendings: Lighten, Darken, Overlay, Color and Normal), and with a soft white/black or sampled colour brush (Opacity 10-30%), I carefully painted over the details I wanted to correct and enhance. Used USM to enhance Contrast and to lightly sharpen the image.

Finally I used the USM to enhance the contrast and to sharpen the image a bit.

I would like to thank everybody who helped out on this photo, I have learnt a lot just by this thread, and thank you Flora for giving me great detail and download links, Great Work ,Much Appreciated.
Chris