My Uncle's Father from 1922

[smiley guy]

I just finished this restoration for my uncle. Any comments and critiques would be welcome. Thanks for your time.

Original is from 1922 and was quite bowed in the frame. It was photographed with a digicam (Pentax istD, I think) at 72 dpi. I upsampled the photo to print quality at 300 dpi and original dimensions of 13.75x19.25 in. Duped the original for repair work. Curves, levels, channel mixer for colour balance and casts etc. Client wanted the sepia tone maintained and there was a green hand tint in the background that he wanted maintained as well. I added the dark background into the vignette to make it easier when it came time to cut the print for the frame. He had the original frame restored and wanted the print back in that frame. Leaving the background transparent or white would have not afforded him any leeway with the cutting.

[Cassidy]

first coments, congrats on defeating the silvering

[Kraellin]

nice job overall. good cleaning!

the whites are a bit too 'blown out', though. they need to be toned down and maybe some shadowing added here and there to bring back some texture/contrast to the overall white/gray areas of his clothing. not much; just enough to break up all that white.

the vignetting is a bit stronger than the original and it wouldnt hurt to bring that back closer to the original, but it's a minor point and more subjective than objective.

craig

[smiley guy]

Thanks to both of you for the positive comments!

Kraelin, can you give me some pointers for the white? I wasn't sure what to do with it. I recognized the problem but tried to fix it without "flattening" the image and trying to maintain some level of contrast and pop. The original was pretty blown out and didn't have a lot of info to work with in those areas. Your help would be much appreciated.

Damn! Busted! I cheated a little on the vignette and sampled the darkest part of the original vignette for the new vignette. I was hoping to cover up some of the blemishes to reduce the patch job somewhat... The other thing about the new vignette was that I was hoping to cover up the original oval shape completely to aid in the re-framing job (as explained in the original post) but it is still showing through on the right hand side. I think just some more tweaking with the blurred mask will cover that up but it was just so much tweaking and undoing that I had to stop at some point. Always a trade off because the more I tried to cover up the oval on the right it was getting too heavy on the left. Any advice there or just more trial and error?

Thanks again for your help.

[Kraellin]

smiley,

flora is better at this than i am, but i'll give ya what i can on the whites. a curves or levels adjustment layer would have helped here. with curves you can adjust any differences in the white shades so that they would stand out more. there wasnt much to begin with but there are some. curves would help you bring those differences out more and give some contrast. that's the best advice. short of that you could also try a contrast/adjustment layer to accomplish the same thing, but that will only give you an overall contrast and probably wont work as well as the curves.

and being that i'm guessing the curves wont fully do what is really needed here, i'd take another tip from flora and add a blank raster layer and do some 'back painting'. that's where you paint on a blank layer to add data to another layer. with the blank layer on top of the other layer you simply use whatever paint or airbrush you want and at a fairly low opacity, fill in more data. in this case it would be some shading on all that white area. and if the curves layer helped bring out any other shading, use that and enhance that shading even more with back painting. if necessary, use a blend mode like multiply or hard light to enhance this even further. other blending modes might apply depending on how much or how little back painting you did.

the idea is to draw in what's missing. just draw it in manually, but do it on a separate layer for easier adjustments, blending, and then blur the back painting layer to smooth it (this last is optional and the degree of blurring would be dependent on the results).

and as for the vignetting, like i said, that's not quite as severe as the white issue, so whatever you want there is up to you. to me, with a severely critical eye and attitude, it looks like just a tad too much, too close in to the center. so, i'd tend to take it back a bit if possible. but, if that was a solution to something else, well, that's up to you. one thing you might try that might work ok in this instance, is to just take a lighten/darken tool and go over the edges of the vignette to lighten it a tiny bit to move it back from center. if this was done at a low opacity it might work ok. but, up to you

good luck!

craig

[Mike]

I can add nothing to the advice you are getting, however the title of this thread made me sit up and take notice. Wouldn't your uncles father be your grandfather or am I missing something?

[smiley guy]

Good point, Mike. No. This is my father's sister's husband's father. Clear as mud. LOL

So, still my uncle and still my uncle's father.

[Mike]

OK, I beg your understanding, but please do not say mud, we are on day 23 of rain. We have had some breaks for an hour or two, but it starts up again and again and again....... And I just saw the news and they cannot see an end to this. The record is 33 days and I guess that we are on track to beat that.

Just glad I live in an area that has good drainage and no hills, for the hills are starting to move and flatten out no matter how much the house on top of the hill cost......

[MaryLynn]

But, Mike, without the rain we northwesterners lose our ability to distinguish 256 shades of gray! I bet your view of the mountains (when you can see them) is really beautiful now with all the snow.

Good luck, smiley, with this restoration.

MaryLynn