How Did I Do On This One?

[Jon Foster]

Here's a restoration I just spent a few hours doing. The original is some sort of lapel pin measuring about 2 x 2.5". The picture is glued into the back of the pin which is about .25" deep and can't be removed without destroying what's left of it. I tried to scan it but of course it didn't turn out. So I set up my camera and tripod to make a copy of it. The result was better than I thought it would be but doing the restoration work was a huge pain. I still need to do a little work on the mans eye (left one in the picture) but I'm done for tonight. Here's the before and after... Let me know what you think! Any pointers would be appreciated.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...h/IMG_0131.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...nestFWerth.jpg

Jon.

[Kraellin]

hi jon,

well, you're right about the man's eyes. they still need work. currently, they look a bit too cavernous (boy, there's a word i dont get to use much). i think you're going to have to do a bit of rebuilding on guesswork. the original shadows in the picture around his eyes are very deceiving and i think you're going to have to ignore some of that and just 'make them right'.

nice job on the girls.

i'd also have left the gold frame in. it's actually part of the overall piece at this point. like you said, it cant be removed without destroying it, so you might as well treat it as part of the picture at this point. the two are inseparable.

it's a difficult piece. the film is degrading and parts are missing. reconstruction is an entirely different game from retouching or even restoring. rebuilding takes some careful study and often meticulous pixel by pixel work. i'll give you two tips here. 1. zoom in to work, stop, zoom out to look. do this often! and 2. walk away from the image once in a while. put it down, go take a walk, feed the kids, do some manual labor or whatever and then come back. fresh eyes and a fresh view ARE a part of your discipline in this line of work. being able to see something newly in a new unit of time is a skill. and it needs to be practiced. there is a tendency when you're working in close to use memory to work with and that can be deadly. you want observation, not 'from memory'. you're constantly making small (or large changes), but your memory is telling you what things looked like and that can trip you up after making a few dozen or more changes. walk away! this is also why you zoom in to work, zoom out and look. i've had images where i do way too many changes before i look at it newly and end up hitting the 'undo last 100 changes' button. that can be maddening. so, forget memory and observe!

it's looking good so far

craig

[Jon Foster]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to see if I can get more photo's with the guy in them so I can try copying the eyes. I can't get them any better in this picture (well beyond my abilities). You think I should keep the lapel pin in there? I guess I could take another shot of it under different lighting to see what I can get. I haven't given it back yet so it's easy enough to try. Thanks for the suggestions.

Jon.

[Kraellin]

ok, i took a shot at the eyes. difficult. the first thing i did was to try and fix the one on our right (his left). then i made a selection of it and made a new image of it. i then mirrored the new image. on the original, i made a new raster layer and copied the mirrored image onto that. i then used the 'pick' tool to rotate it and place it where it shld be. then, right click the selection to set it.

on the new eye, i erased bits around it that didnt fit right and did some 'push' (a heavy smudge) to blend it in more.

there was also lots of little bits of cloning here and there and more push to make things look a bit better overall. i did NOT try to put more eye there than was there to begin with, like a more defined pupil and so on, but you could. and if you were going to do that, then i would suggest finding an additional picture with his eyes showing better and copy from that.

as for borrowing his eyes from another image, do whatever you need or think best there. it's a matter of how much you want to do to fix things up really.

i didnt try to do the whole thing and i didnt try to save any color on this for now. i just wanted to see about the eyes.

craig

[Jon Foster]

Thanks Craig, I haven't worked on it at all in the last couple of days. The high winds had our power out and we don't use the computers when we're running on generators. I'll try to play around with it a little more this week. I really would like to find another picture of him with a decent view of his eyes and work from that if possible.

Thanks again!

Jon.

[Kraellin]

you're welcome, jon. and good luck on your search.

craig

[Jon Foster]

I'm still waiting for a reply to see if I can have access to other family photos of the guy in the picture so I guess I'll just put it on the back burner for now...

Jon.