Please Critique This One

[Doug]

Ok this is my 2nd post to this group. The first one was a plea for help with a really badly damaged old photo.

I thought I would try another really bad one that means a lot to me. This photo is one of me and my cousins. We were all reallly close growing up.

I am attaching the original photo. As you can see it is really washed out.

I'm pretty new at Photoshop. I don't even know "layers" yet. But the main thing I did was to apply the "equalize" command to the photo. The problem was this made the sky alll gray.

To get rid of the gray sky I used the magic erase command. It did a wonderful job of even erasing the gray patches between leaves.

After that I used a lot of dodge and burning.

Ok let me post this and I'll show you what I did.
Doug

[Doug]

Ok here is the photo reworked.

My biggest disappointent is that one person in the photo, the fellow at the top of the ladder, I could not bring out the details of his face. That person is me! :-)

Any suggestions there?

Your comments are welcome.

Thanks,

Doug Roberts

[G. Couch]

This is a pretty difficult one to restore...even for someone who knows Photoshop really well!

The first thing I notice is that the restoration has far too much contrast. I think you have lost a great deal of detail by pushing the contrast up so much. You might try using a Curves or Levels adjustment, rather than dodge and burn. Ed L has a great tutorial on basic Curves adjustments located here - http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/curves/index.html

Another tut. which may be of interest to you is this one by Jakaleena, which explains Layers in very clear terms - http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/layers/index.html

Another thing to keep in mind is the level of light hitting their faces. You did a great job of bringing the faces out but it looks a little unnatural given the light source (from behind) and level of contrast.

I like the amount of detail you were able to back to the house and the reconstruction of the top of the swingset is very well done.

[Trimoon]

The details are there. You need a good scan to bring them out. Try and have it scanned on a drum scanner.

[G. Couch]

I'm not sure a drum scan is going to do much good unless he still has the original transparency...any decent flat-bed, with proper calibration, should bring out all the detail in the print.

[roger_ele]

Doug,

Hi, you have done a very good job. You have got the look throughout the photo very consistant. I have done some quick layers adjustments to keep it a natural photo look with the detail that is in the photo just to show a different approach.

You should definantly learn layers, jump in and play.

The photo you did looks a little unreal with the clothing being so dark and faces so clear. But it is an excellent job, if that is the look you wanted you kicked _ It is pretty to look at with the smoother tones you have created with your technique, without all the noise/grain of the original.

Descriptions are in the name of each layer, with the blending mode.

Working from the background layer;

-First the background layer (did nothing to it)
-Curves to lighten bottom (used gradient to mask to just the bottom)
-Levels layer in screen mode to lighten overall
-Curves to raise contrast in bottom
-Curves to darken to in multiply mode
-Curves in multiply layer duplicated and backed off to 70% opacity
-Curves to raise overall contrast now that all has about the same look
-blank layer in overlay mode, white and black painted at 10% brush opacity to lighten and darken respectively

Do the tutorials and then come back and look at this and it will start to make sense, I promise.

Roger

[Doug]

Thanks for the feed back everyone.

I'm going to rescan this one. I had just used the scaner's "auto" mode before.

I know I did overdo the dodging some on the faces. :-)

I will try using the suggestions to see what I can do. See if I can get this "levels" thing going.

Thanks,

Doug