My tweaks

[AtlanaAnna]

The Cowboy-BobbieTif is the original. I cleaned the background on this although there wasn't much to clean. Then I did a Auto Level adjustment. I don't know of anything else to do. Is this okay or please suggest improvements. Thanks, Sylvia

[Swampy]

Overall, pretty good, but the finished version seems flat to me. Needs more contrast to bring up the eyes. Try an "S Curve" adding more shadows in the 3/4 tones.

[Arandel]

I agree with Swampy, and prefer the original of this photo. You do have the right idea of action, but took it too far. Try to mask out certain parts of the photo that needs more light, in order to make it "pop".

[CJ Swartz]

Sylvia,

You've shown a serious interest in learning new skills, and I'd just like to show you a bit about the S-curve mentioned and a few other things that you may or may not know about yet. (There will always be newbies looking at this thread in the future, so hopefully all our posts will eventually help someone. )

If you look at your image after the auto-Levels, you can barely see the shadow next to her nose. The photographer set up his/her lights on purpose to add some shadows to her face -- to add a sense of depth/3-dimensionality. If the shadows were not there, she might look like a cardboard cutout standing in front of a background. Photographers also use shadows to make a broad-faced person (like me) look slimmer, but this lovely girl doesn't need any extra shadowing -- just enough to make her look real. Swampy mentioned the S-curve, which is a frequently used tool to add contrast -- darkening the shadows and lightening the highlights. I've posted a picture of an S-curve below -- it really looks like an "S" -- it can be less or more S shaped -- you can change it according to your need, AND as you learn more about working with Curve adjustments (they are still hard for me -- very useful, but still difficult for me to control -- time and practice will eventually lead me to improvement, I trust.) When I tried an S-curve on your retouch, I found that the highlights were already too bright -- parts of her blouse are already "blown out" (use your color picker and run it over the image to see the amount of saturation in each area), so I added a "contrast mask" to reduce the brightness of the highlights. It also "opened up" some of the shadows in her hair. What's a contrast mask? It's one of those simple things, especially when we're already working with a black/white image -- duplicate your working image layer, (desaturate if working with color), invert this new copy (Control-I), change the layer Blend mode to "Overlay", and then use the Blur-> Gaussian to blur it "to taste". What we're doing is adding a layer that looks like the film negative of the image back into the image -- where there are highlights in the original layer, the contrast mask layer is dark; where there are shadows in the original layer, the contrast mask is light. I've included an image below that shows your original (after Levels), the image after a contrast mask is added, and the image after I then added an S-curve Curves adjustment layer -- I reduced the opacity of the Curves adj. layer to 40% because I thought it looked "too contrasty" to me, but that's another neat thing about adjustment layers -- you can use them with different layer blends (normal, luminosity, multiply, etc.) and you can use them at different opacity settings. (You need to change your image from grayscale to RGB to use Luminosity layer blending, if you had a reason to do that.)

Now, this was just to show you some options, and we always need to have as many options as we can get. When we're starting, options can be confusing, but they're still a good thing.

[AtlanaAnna]

Am I heading in the right direction?

[zganie]

I did a slight curve adjustment,then a contrast mask adjustment on the eyes
hope this helps
zganie

[AtlanaAnna]

This is nice. Did you specifically make a selection on the eyes to do the contrast adjustment? If so, it looks very natural. As I'm learning, I've been afraid to make specific adjustments like that for fear it would end up looking so different from the picture that they would look like they didn't belong in the picture. Thank you!

Sylvia

[stosh7]

The contrast mask was a good starting point. Curves and some dodging and burning and here's my best shot.

Critiques please?

Stosh

[AtlanaAnna]

I like the contrast but the features look overly sharp or something. I'm trying to learn too so someone else may give you better feedback.

Thank you!
Sylvia

[Kraellin]

hi sylvia,

i think yours is looking quite good. that's a restore. period.

you can take this an extra step, if you wish. once restored, you can now do a retouch. it's just that extra little you can throw in for a client.

here's mine:

duplicated background

contrast/brightness adjustment layer of 34/17

copy merge and paste as new layer.

usm (unsharp mask) of 2/100/5 (sharpening)

clarify 4 (contrasting)

salt and pepper 3/7 (this is a sort of noise reduction)

clone to remove larger specks and smooth some of the background shading

blank layer with dark airbrushing on the background to add more contrast to overall image.

gausian blurred the airbrushed layer at 22, then erased spill-over

copy merge and paste to new layer.

done.

the salt and pepper filter tends to blur a bit. the usm sharpens. so, i ended up fairly close to what the original was as far as sharpness. it could actually stand a touch more sharp now, but i left it out on the final.

i love these old photos. that one looks about circa 1950 or so, maybe 1945-6.

[AtlanaAnna]

Gorgeous, beautiful work, Craig! Thank you for all the specifics of how you achieved this restore. That's a done deal.

Thanks,
Sylvia

[Kraellin]

thank you, sylvia i like that one too. great original pic.

[DCobb]

Gave this one a try. I used Focus Magic in addition to an adjustment layer. Cleaned up the background with dust and scratches.

dc