First color restoration, c/c and help!

[mellyrose]

Hey all. I'm no stranger to retouching, but I've never ever dabbled in real restoration (colorization, etc). My dad has had this photo floating around since it was taken 30 years ago, and I thought I would do something nice for him, so I took a stab at it. I used lots of layers and masking, but ran into a couple problems so I improvised a bunch too!

My biggest issues were with the hair in the front, it was very scratched up and undefined and therefore wound up like a dark blob.

Getting a normal flesh color was very difficult to achieve with this photo as well. Any tips?

If anyone wants to play with the photo, HERE is the high rez version.

Thanks in advance!

[mellyrose]

Anyone? I really struggled with this and would like some advice at least on the skin tones and hair problems please.

[mellyrose]

I guess I'm on my own here. 61 views and not a peep.

[dontbugme]

I don't know if this is still practical, but I'd try restoring the detail from the original after retouching but before colorizing. This is easiest to do in LAB, but a later merge in RGB using luminosity should work too. In onther words, get the contrast and detail from one image, the color from the other.

[Cassidy]

Personally I think the skin and hair colours are too sameish

[mellyrose]

And how do I fix this? This was literally my first attempt with no prior guidance or experience. Any suggestions?

[Cassidy]

The gentleman in the background looks a little more Mediterranean in his skin, so I'd probably add a bit more yellow

[Jerryb]

hi,
First of all keep in mind I am just a novice... i am still learning and have ways to go... and hopefully if i say anything that not quite right the guru's will jump in... smile.. and correct...

But maybe I can be of some help... first issues I had with the final picture you had....

1. your picture to me appears to have way too much red in it... there appears to be a red cast on everything...
2. the faces are of the same color... myself face/skin color are always different between 2 people and I alwys like put a slight difference between them..
3. the faces appear on my computer to have way too much red in it...

now when I do colorizing, one of the things I do is to mask off the various areas... then colorize.... I may put the mask areas onto a seperate layer so I don't have to worry to much about effecting the rest of the picture...

Now skin colors are probably the most difficult to do.. to get the right texture and color... smile... it to me very difficult... some time what I do if I am having difficult time is take a look at the color values of the skin another picture and plug them into the project ...

and once I have the overall skin color I like then I'll go in and maybe using the dodge and burn tool hilight parts of the skin..

Now the below two tutorial links I think may help you...
the first is applying skin color to a black and white...
and the other is using curves to eleminate color cast...



http://www.swedesignz.com/photoshop/Image_Coloring
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=85

Well I hope that is usefull

Originally Posted by mellyrose

And how do I fix this? This was literally my first attempt with no prior guidance or experience. Any suggestions?

[mellyrose]

Thank you very much! Like I said, this is not my area of expertise...I'm usually a strict retoucher/designer. Your advice will help me in the future.

[Vikki]

It looks as if you've limited yourself to just a couple of colors, mainly red.
To really judge for yourself how the image looks, view it next to a similar color photograph and not a black & white. You'll see right away, what's wrong.

Regarding skin tones: realistic skin tones can not be achieved by selecting one color and filling the facial area. No one's skin is a single color.

I recommend you do a search on this site for colorizing as there is a lot of information and links that are specific to colorizing a b&w image.