Its not really a restore job but...

[tb5821]

any suggestions for this pic, perhaps the top right? or anything else you guys see wrong, if you could help me fix that would be great.

http://www.silverscreencreations.com...ette_small.psd

[byRo]

Besides the top right....

You need to focus on the subject. The photo is about the man and the car, the background doesn't add much, actually is quite distracting.
Try blurring the background a bit, maybe desaturating too, darkening, lower contrast.......
As the car is very reflective it tends to end up almost invisible - so the job is a little bit more difficult than usual.

Hope this helps.
Rô

[realaqu]

I slightly changed the highlights and shadows, and put another color balance layer to remove the blueish after my adjustment.

realaqu

[Duv]

I thought I'd just take Realaqu's nice adjustment a bit further to incorporate Ro's ideas a bit. Blurred the homes a bit and cropped tighter. Of course with the tighter crop, if you were framing would require a special size.

Cheers
Dave

[tb5821]

Can you give me some details into how exactly you did this?

Originally Posted by realaqu

I slightly changed the highlights and shadows, and put another color balance layer to remove the blueish after my adjustment.

realaqu

[realaqu]

Hi

My work starts form red one, use image->adjustment->shadow/hight,
I set 3 sample points to check if there exists color cast( I assume they are all neutual areas) then put a color balance adjustment layer to correct it. becasue at 1# sample point, there is strong blue color cast. so I use another curve layer, the green one, to get rid of blue cst on masked area.

because I deleted my original PSD file, so I don't have detailed data on this picture. hope this could do a little help.

realaqu

[Caitlin]

I agree with Duv & Ro about blurring the background - I've just pushed it a little further. I worked on your 'edit layer', deleting all other layers/adjustments. Apart from that (Gausian blur of b/g), and level adjusts, I also adjusted colour balance, increased the saturation of the foreground a little, USM, and Neat Image noise removal.

[tb5821]

Originally Posted by Caitlin

I worked on your 'edit layer', deleting all other layers/adjustments. Apart from that (Gausian blur of b/g), and level adjusts, I also adjusted colour balance, increased the saturation of the foreground a little, USM, and Neat Image noise removal.

I think I will def. Gausian blur the background. Can you tell me what you adjusted as far as color, and saturation and the settings. What is USM?

I also used Neat Image to remove the noise but I didn't apply it to the payvement...

[Caitlin]

Hi tb,

Mostly I just removed Magenta - that tends to be what old photos fade to, so it's the first thing I try playing with. Values : -3, +24, +5. These were just by eye, and I don't claim to have a properly calibrated monitor so...

+10 saturation.

USM = Unsharp Mask - it's the best way of sharpening up the details in a picture easily, and can be found inder the shapen filters (search the forum or tutorials section for detailed instructions on best usage ( though I haven't read up on it myself yet!!).

The Neat Image was largely to clean up the car finish a bit, though I was lazy and applied it across the while image. I found I had to increase the image size of your small image in order to sample a blank section of the car.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Caitlin

I've just pushed it a little further.

Maybe a little too far. I'd be trying to imitate some sort of Depth-of-Field effect, by which far away things get blurred and the objects at the same distance as the car will be sharp.
So, yes, blur the buildings but go light on the white fence and don't touch the road under the car.
If you just blur everything but the car (and the man) you're a cadidate for the terrible "Oh, you did that with Photoshop" comment. It looks fixed.

Rô

[tb5821]

Originally Posted by byRo

If you just blur everything but the car (and the man) you're a cadidate for the terrible "Oh, you did that with Photoshop" comment. It looks fixed.

Rô

lol Thanks for the tip....


It might be a bit too late, but I'm planning on using shutterfly for the first time to print this picture out. What I had originally done is scan the negative in with my HP Scanjet 5370c Scanner at 1600 dpi. Then started fixing it in ps, but I wanted them to print it on 16X20 paper, how do I figure out exactly how it will look? is there some way to get a preview of what it would look like on 16X20 paper in ps? I know that there will be white space on the top and bottom of the paper due to the 35mm film size thats ok...

[tb5821]

What do you guys think about this one with the blur applied and the color corrected?

http://www.silverscreencreations.com...ette_small.psd

[Caitlin]

Originally Posted by byRo

Maybe a little too far. I'd be trying to imitate some sort of Depth-of-Field effect, by which far away things get blurred and the objects at the same distance as the car will be sharp.
So, yes, blur the buildings but go light on the white fence and don't touch the road under the car.
If you just blur everything but the car (and the man) you're a cadidate for the terrible "Oh, you did that with Photoshop" comment. It looks fixed.

Rô

You're absolutely right of course, and I was aware of that - but to be honest thought the fence was so ugly, it was worth making the photo look a bit unnatural, to remove it!! I'm not sure what tb wanted out of the picture, as there were no specific requirements - I was tempted to just pull dad and the car out completely and put them on a different background!!

[Caitlin]

Originally Posted by tb5821

What do you guys think about this one with the blur applied and the color corrected?

http://www.silverscreencreations.com...ette_small.psd

Looks good to me - but you need to blur the car window as well - as at the moment the fence is clearer through the glass than around it!

You might want to post your results as a 100k jpg to the forum as a matter of course too (even if you also include a link) that way people can see the image quickly, and it will be here forever for people to browse, while your link will probably die at some stage.

[byRo]

Oops, you forgot the fence in the window of the open door ... see it now?

Oops, again, caitlin beat me to it!!

Rô