Hi Everyone,

While in the past I had done all my restoration work by hand, I have been teaching myself PS.
This is my first paid job in PS.
All opinions welcome :)
Thanks,
Juliana

Hi Juliana,

The pictures are a little small to see enough detail to give a valid criticism. Perhaps if you were to post a before and an after seperately, then your images would'nt be so constrained by the 100K limit.

This is easily done, attatch your 1st image in the usual manner, when that has uploaded, then just repeat the process for the 2nd image. (You're allowed 100K for each.)

From what I can see, you seem to have done a good job of cleaning up the various blemishes. The sky looks a bit flat,and there's a couple of things I'd like to look at closer, but as I said, hard to judge from posted image size.

It is a good restoration. I'd say you're doing the same thing I did when I started out, which is trying to give old photos modern contrast. Materials back then did not have the capabilities of the strong blacks and bright whites we have today, so it ends up drawing attention to the fact that it's had work done. Some of the finer shadow details seem to be pretty compressed (perhaps even clipped, I can't tell at this resolution).

I think it turned out pretty good.
For some reason, I don't see what the others are seeing.
The sky looks the same as the original to me, and the contrast only looks a tad more intense than the original. I agree with Doug though, that too much contrast can really be a dead give-a-way.
The only thing I would do, would be a bit more work on those shadows/stains on the boy. They don't really look like shadows, so I would recommend dodging those areas a bit more. The other thing would be to clone some good grass onto the black area to the right of the boy.

Thanks very much for the pointers :)

Gary :
I'll try to post larger files today, It is a little busy here at the moment (my co worker called in sick) If not I will get them up on Monday.
I thought the 1oo K was the limit for the whole post, so I combined the images. Glad to know I can do two files.
I don't know how much better they will be as the original print is only 3x4 inches.

Doug:
It did not seem as contrasty(sp?) here but it could be my monitor, or I bumped it up for printing on the Frontier here (probably a little of both).
It seems to have really dull contrast levels on the Frontier interface, but I think the software is set up like that on purpose so we can correct more.
The lady I did this for wanted it to be B&W, I would have dropped in a nice sepia tone so it would look similar to the original were it for myself.
How do I fix the "clipping" you were talking about?

Vikki:
I was afraid of going too far on correcting the shadow areas. The original had the common error of the photographer getting thier shadow in the shot.
I was fifty-fifty on if I should totally get rid of the shadows, or just tone them down as the customer asked.
I was just glad to find that there were some details left in there.
I probably did this the long way but I opened the image twice and made separate curves adjustments on each image (one for the bulk of the image one for the shadow areas) Then I selected my adjusted shadow area and moved it over to the other image.
The only part that was a real bugger was the open hand, it seemed to be the only place that the detail was very bad. The original was a somewhat soft,but that wasn't too hard to deal with.
Other than that lots of patch, clone and airbrush.

It was a fun pic to work on nonetheless :) And thanks again for your feedback Gary, Doug and Vikki

Looks pretty good to me.

A few things that bother me about it:

As mentioned, the sky does look flat. Also, it comprises too much of the photograph, contending with the boy for focal point strenght. Unless you REALLY want to keep the photo the same dimensions, consider removing a quarter of the sky to diminish this problem.

Something about the details in the links of the fence bothers me. I think that the "lack" of detail of the original also helps put focus on the boy.

T

here is the new files, I hope I did this right with the "save for web" function

and thanks again for the tips :) I started a little notebook for things to watch out for while I am working on stuff.

Hi Juliana, thanks for the larger images.

Just one real criticism really, the sky is a little too bright for my taste, and the whites in the boys shirt front are a little blown out. (This may be just on the posted image, slight posterisation sometimes happens on posted images.) It could easily be adjusted with a curves adj layer masked to affect only the shirt area.

Other than that, you've done a very nice job on this picture.

Clipping = detail discarded in the highlight and shadow areas, ie: "clipped" off the ends of the histogram. In highlight areas usually known as "blown out". I noticed this especially in the foliage at the bottom right. But it's hard to judge GIF format files, since they're compressed by discarding and combining tonal values.

I'll go back and read the threads on saving for the posts :) I was in a rush to get the better files up. I'll bet I did something wrong when I saved.

When I did the prints the sky came up with a nice faint texture, though I agree I proably set the contrast up a too high for the period of the piece. And the stripes come up a little on his shirt. I didn't even know the shirt was striped until I started working with the high contrast areas.

I was most worried about his open hand looking all fake, because I had to do alot of airbrushing to get it looking somewhat right. I guess i had been looking at it so long I was constantly coming back to that same area. I had to keep myself from going crazy on it in there. :)

Thanks again so much for the feedback, much appreciated :)

hi there,

the photo looks alot better than it originally did, but im not sure if anyone else picked up on this or if it is my imagination, on the edited picture near the boys hands there is a small face, not sure if this part of the picture or not but it does not look like it should be there. other wise great job

Missmab..

Please elaborate more on this small face. I'm looking, to no avail. But, I want to see what it is you see.

T

I see it Tyler,

It looks like an old man's face in the shadow on the overall bib above his hands......kind of freaky since the pic is of a man who is now in his 80's

It's obviously a possession. Quick send for an exorcist. :)