Finishing Touch

[Gerald McClaren]

I've been working on this photo for quite sometimes and would like some help in puttting the fininishing touch on it, also, what needs to be done to make it looks a little better. The photo was black and white and I tried to hand paint it into color. I had tried to smooth out the neck and lighten it a bit by using the clone and dodge tool but it doesn't come out too good. Thanks.


Gerald McClaren

[twinkissed]

I would have to see what you started out with to give you my complete input. It looks like the neck line should have had an alternative color. At first I thought she had a necklace on but I don't think that so much now. Also, there is a lot of fog over the photo. I would try to eliminate that and add a little highlighting to the face to bring back some of the dimension. The white is too white, square, and flat in my opinion. Like I said, I don't know what the original looked like so I may be wrong on some things.

[Cameraken]

Hi Gerald

Is this any help?

It took about an hour from start to finish using your original post

Ken

[Panpan]

Hi Gerald.

Here is a smoothed version of the reconstruction from the previous thread. I also removed a distorting skew of the head I thought I saw.

You've progressed a lot since that step. You added the rest of the head. However in smoothing you lost some of the 3d feel of the portrait. You could maybe use the attached picture to help restore some of that modeling.

Pierre

[twinkissed]

This is a super fast example of what I was mentioning.

[Gerald McClaren]

Okay, here is the original of the photo above. She is wearing a necklace.

Gerald W. McClaren

[twinkissed]

Aaaah ok, the sharp triangle was throwing me off... much better. Lemme see what I can do. I'm keeping to myself today so lots of time for photo playing YAY!

[Gerald McClaren]

I would like a critique on this photo that I had re-done. Please explain in basic detail what was done to improve it. I'm still learning some of the basic stuff. I really appreciate it because I don't have a lot of experience in restoring photos in Photoshop CS2. Thank you very much.

Gerald McClaren

[garazon]

Hi Gerald,

I'm still learning some of the basic stuff.

Me too, and I've been doing this a few years now
First and foremost it's important to remember that it takes Patience, Perseverance and Practice when learning to restore/retouch. The 3 P's

As someone in one of the posts above, Ken I believe it was, said, to make it realistic you need to create a feeling of depth. I believe you've made some progress since your first post! Hang in there, you'll get it where you want it.

I worked on this last night some and although I use PaintShopPro instead of Photoshop, I can't give you specific details on settings and such, but I think the general steps I used translate basically the same to PS .

I personally think you need to become proficient with layers, this will be your first step in recreating a feeling of depth, although there are many skilled one here and around who can achieve that on a single layer, I'm jealous.

Ok my steps involved in getting to my result.

A. Restoration
I began by duplicating the original to another layer and focusing on keeping just the top left portion where it's been torn, I erased everything else. then it was just a matter of moving the layer so that the face lines up correctly, it appeared a little off in the original scan. Once aligned I merged down. Next I ran a greyscaler plugin that I like (Xero). It keeps the image color depth from decreasing.
I also centered the person so that I could replace the background later.
First I dealt with the missing areas, hair was copied and mirrored, then skewed a bit. Clone tool filled in where I thought the hair would be. Other missing areas were rough filled for the time being
The tears on the facial areas were filled in slightly with the clone brush and finished with a scratch remover tool that psp has, I think the healing brush is similar in PS. When all areas were filled, another duplication of the layer. I then created a mask of sorts of the skin and facial areas, using a freehand selection with a slight feather , making sure that only skin was left, detail items like eyes, lips, etc where removed from the selection. Then ran several noise reducers until I achieved a fairly even skin look. PSP lets me save selections, I'm certain PS does as well, so I save most selections I make on an image, saves time in the work, but not having to do it again. Anyway merged the fixed skin down, brushed the edges to blend into the surrounding areas.

Next, after all missing parts had been filled with something, I just duplicated the layer several times; one for the skin, one for hair, dress, etc. Putting them in a natural order keeps it simpler, and removing all elements not associated with that particular layer, ie on the eye layer deleted everything except the eyes, and so on for each layer. Then it was matter of just playing with each, color, textures etc to achieve the look I was shooting for.
Once done I just added a background and dropped a shadow from the person. Sounds simple anyway!

A few specifics:
Hair - after getting the color right, I selected all the hair, ran high pass sharpen a couple of times, then added a small amount of noise, which to me recreates a depth feeling. You have to play with the amount to get the right look. Another thing to keep in mind when erasing/removing areas around the hair is to use a soft brush, and maybe even at a low density so that the edges don't seem so sharp and unnatural against the background.

Dress: I simply rough filled the dress from surrounding areas. Then I did a selection outlining the dress, doing one side at a time, but saving the selection.
I did a motion blur, about 170 degrees on the left, 190 on the right, Then used a smudge brush to create the shadows/creases. Another thing this does is makes the area have a little transparency, gives a nice effect which recreates a depth feel also. When done with the smudging, I loaded both dress selections and added a small amount of noise(monochromatic)..Although this was quickly done, and the edges could use some more work. I think it turned out fairly well.
Hope some of this helps, and I'm sure there are others who can probably do a better job at explaining things than I can, or give better suggestions for that matter!
keep up the good work

[Gerald McClaren]

Garazon, I really appreciated the work you had done on this picture, I like the color, depth and quality. I need to learn to work with layers more often when I'm restoring a photo. So, I'll find a book and tutorial that can teach me how and when to use layers in photoshop.
First, how did you achieved that color and smoothness of the skin? Second, where did you get the ears, it looked realistic with the 3D effect. Last, I had noticed you had kept the chest intact. When I had used the clone tool to smooth the chest, I lose the shape, in other, it came out too flat. This picture was fantastic! I can follow most of what you've done in Photoshop Cs2. Thanks again.
Gerald McClaren

[garazon]

Thanks Gerald,

I can't think of very many instances where I don't use layers. It will benefit you greatly to learn to use them

As far as the color and smoothness of the skin, well I used just used one of the default skin tones in the manual color correction to in PSP to get the color and as far as the smoothness, well that was just a matter of duplicating the image on another layer deleting evrything but the skin area and running one of the noise reduction filters on it then merging the layer down and blended the areas. Quick fixes actually. There are a couple of tutorials that touch on someting similar to what I did here
and here . Again I can't stress enough the importance of layers!!

Wow I wish I could take credit for creating the great 3d effect of the ear by painstakingly painting the details , but alas I must confess and say I suck at artistic capabilities. The ear belongs to me! I copied it from a picture of mine and pasted it in, greyscaled and colored with the rest of the skin! hey it works although I think the proportion is off a bit here.

As far as the dress, I just used the clone tool to fill in the area roughly, didn't ry to recreate the dress or smooth with the clone tool. I tried to explain what I did in the previous post, but explanations aren't my strong suit either!

Glad this might have been of some help.

[digraphicx]

have you considered throwing away the color and using a sepia tone? how about feathering your painting strokes? adjusting the size and style of the paint brush or the stamp tool? just some suggestions

[HeatherRankin]

I took the original photo and did a little work to it. I find that when retouching and restoring old photos, it's best to stick with what you've got. Try to keep the original coloring and textures as best you can. It takes a while, but eventually you'll find what tools work best for different situations, and what you feel most comfortable working with.

Keep it up!

Heather

[CJ Swartz]

Heather -- welcome to RetouchPRO! Wonderfully natural restoration -- very nice model for Gerald to use as a goal.

Garazon -- very nice work, and your explanations/recommendations should be very helpful.

Gerald -- you've got a good start, and Garazon's "3 P's" will help you go the distance. Having a good finished product to compare to (Heather's and Garazon's, though different in style, both look very good to me) will probably help guide you. Working from a photo with missing pieces is not easy for anyone!

[Gerald McClaren]

Heather, you had done a very good job with what you had. You didn't change a whole lot, moreover, you had kept the original color. The original is about sixty years and it was in black and white. As you know, the yellowish color is the degradation of the photo. I agreed with you in trying to keep the original texture and color. Maybe, I'm doing too much of a drastic change to my mother picture instead of keeping everything in its original state.
That's is the reason it is taking me so long to complete it. Lack of experience in photoshop is on of them. I only started to use photoshop about six months ago, it takes a lot of practice and talking to people like you and Garazon in Retouchpro to gain that experience. I know it will take a while to learn it, I'm not giving up at all. I'm a very persistent person in learning something. Thanks again for the info and I'll remember what you had said about retouching and restoring old photos.

Gerald McClaren