Restoration Project

[AtlanaAnna]

In 2001, I moved back home to take care of my mother who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. While I've been home, I've found some amazingly old pictures from my mother's family. My mother and her brothers and sisters grew up very hard........... abuse, poverty, you name it. I decided to try to gather pictures from her brothers and sisters as well that they might have, restore them, and send them all copies. I dreamed this up in 2002 and wanted to give them the pictures by Christmas of that year. Well, we're heading to Christmas of 2005 and I am really struggling. I've gotten more accomplished toward this project since I've joined RetouchPros but it's slow going. I decided I'd use this picture project to force myself to learn Photoshop. I have version 7. I have learned a lot from this group but I often get stuck and I often have a hard time concentrating with everything else going on around here with my mother's care. I haven't gotten anything accomplished in weeks on the last picture I started working on because I've had difficulty concentrating enough to learn how to use the masking technique I wanted to use on this picture. I need some angels to take me under their wings and help me get through this project. I think I've got almost 100 pictures I want to restore and I've completed, maybe 5!

[rondon]

I've had difficulty concentrating enough to learn how to use the masking technique I wanted to use on this picture.

Hi Anna
I never really grasped the mask thing either.. But masks aren't the only way to go.
other than things like curley loose hair I often just make a duplicate layer of something I want free of it's background then use the eraser to carefully cut the subject out... with the original layer hidden....
there is a choice to be made on the eraser's edge .. soft or hard. a soft eraser needs no further adjustment but for a more uniform blend I like to use a small hard eraser then.. after selecting the empty space with the wand use ... select/modify/expand/2 .... then select/feather/2 .. then hit ctrl-X to delete. the "2" in both cases is adjustable depending on resolution.

There are lots of alternative ways to do many things that don't require all that devotion to methods.. PhotoShop for we who are looking for escape should be enjoyable. Just remember to keep the original for a day when you may want to re-try it, but otherwise just jump in and experiment with all the various tools.

I'll give a photo a try for you just E-mail one here... sidetrek@bellouth.net
I'm on a phone modem so I please limit the size to 1-2mb
Bye
RonDon

[MargaretM]

I can squeeze in a couple for you. Send me two at mlgates99@yahoo.com. BIG PROJECT AND THE MONTHS ARE FLYING BY!
Margaret.

[GaryRP]

Hi ... Anna ... same here ... I can do one for you ...

You will need to use our upload image page "Send us an Image" button on our main menu (left hand side).

In the instructions/comments just mention RetouchPro ...

[greatguy]

Do you have some web space where you can upload the files to? You would be able to upload larger files, and members could see what was availible so they ould choose ones where they may best use their talents.

[Caitlin]

Originally Posted by greatguy

Do you have some web space where you can upload the files to? You would be able to upload larger files, and members could see what was availible so they ould choose ones where they may best use their talents.

I can highly recommend photosite - you can host 100 photos for free, and it hosts quite large images (though only jpg I think)

[AtlanaAnna]

GreatGuy,

I love the idea of posting the pictures online. However, they're all .tif files and I don't know if I could post files that large on the web. How would I handle that?

Thank you!

Sylvia Morris

[greatguy]

.tif files are not a problem - anyone can open them. BTW, what editing program are you using? You should be able to open the file as a .tif and 'Save as..." jpg. If not, use microsofts image viewer to do this or microsoft paint. If all else fails there are dozens of shareware programs that can do this and most have free trials. just do a search for "image + converter"

[pjanak]

Count me in. I admit I am far from an "expert" but who knows what one can accomplish in photoshop. I'm on a broadband connection so you can email me a fairly large file at jvideoservices"AT"verizon.net. Of course if your only on dial-up then you'll be limited to maybe about 1 meg in total soize of the image or zip.

Folks this is what programs like Emule, and Kazaa(peer to peer file sharing) are great for. Sure. People share illegal items on these programs. But that was never thier main intent. You can even set it up so that only a specific user or IP address can connect to your shared folder to download the photo. I share files back and forth all the time with my brother and sister. In this way she could scan a 50 or 100 meg photo, save it as a tiff or tga or even a psd and you could get your hands on it in a few minutes if you have broadband. The draw back is that the person offering the photo must always have emule or kazaa running to allow the recipient to aquire the photo. On broadband this is absolutely no big deal. There have been no security flaws found within Emule to date. The person on the server side, in this case, AtlanaAnna could schedule a time and date that she'll have emule running. Heck she could leave it running all night as she sleeps if need be.

Pete

[AtlanaAnna]

pjanak,

This idea may be the easiest and best route. I have RoadRunner, high-speed cable, always on connection. Do I just need to download and install Emule or Kazaa?

AtlanaAnna

[pjanak]

Originally Posted by AtlanaAnna

pjanak,

This idea may be the easiest and best route. I have RoadRunner, high-speed cable, always on connection. Do I just need to download and install Emule or Kazaa?

AtlanaAnna

Yep just DL and install. Emule will ask you what your kilobytes "up and down rates are. You can find that out through your service provider. You can also control emule remotely. Say for example you had to go out of town but wanted to leave emule on for a while longer. When you get to your destination you can type a URL to disable user access

http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/general.cgi?l=1

Read the easy to read manual and you'll undertsnad how you can limit people access to your "share folder"

I havent uused Kazaa but once a long time ago. It basically operates the same as Emule There are no fees at all. Emule is 100% free. But go with whatever you feel most comfortable with. There are also Internet based storage you can use to store all or some of your data/images. They can be any file type. Since this storage has no direct link to your personal computer, you can sign up for free or paid storage and then share a temporary username password with us. In this way we can download the actual Hires scans that you are working with rather than jpegs. Sharing the username and password is no big deal because you can change it any time you want and it also means that none of us would have to sign up just to get in to the storage space. As many may not be willing to have to sign up even if for free.

Pete

[lsaad]

Hey there,

I can help out with a couple as well. Let me know where to DL from once their up.

LISA
email address: lisa@lisasaadphotography.com.au

[AtlanaAnna]

This has taken me quite a while to pull together. Because of Adware and such, I decided to post the pics on a webpage with links to download the .tif file. I appreciate anyone's help. This is a really big project and my skills are still too elementary to tackle some of the problems.

This is the URL where the pics are located:

www.dbxtech.com/photos/photos.htm

Contact me via e-mail at:

sylviamorris@nc.rr.com

[Kraellin]

ho boy. that page is eating up my ram. there are 15 rows of four pics each. and they are all loading fully. even though you're only seeing a thumb, the image data is all being loaded by the browser. that eats up a lot of memory. i'd suggest multiple pages or actual thumbs.

at any rate, i'd also suggest some organization here. if you download one to work on it, post which one(s) you're working on so that 10 folks arent all working on the same one. if the page is left like it is, just post by row and number, e.g. i'm working on row 5, image 3 (3 from the left). post here in RP in this thread.

Craig

[AtlanaAnna]

Craig,

I'm so sorry. I didn't think about that problem. Right now, I'm working on redistributing the images across several more pages and putting a numbering system in place. I'm so sorry. Thanks for letting me know.

Sylvia

[Kraellin]

ok. let us know when you've re-arranged it. i'm currently working on one also.

Craig

[Kraellin]

well, i always pick the pretty girls to work on, so i did this one

Craig

[Nanls]

Hi I will do one, but don't want to duplicate anyone's efforts. If you would upload a couple photos on my site (just hit the upload button - you will have to register first) and upload, but don't finish out the credit card process, I'll be able to access them through the admin area.
~Nancy~
www.fixthepixs.com

[Nanls]

Here's one.

[Kraellin]

very nice, nancy

Craig

[Nanls]

Thank you Craig.. very kind of you. I am not finished with this, however, thought I would put it up, just so nobody would duplicate efforts. Will post it agin when finished.
~Nancy~

[AtlanaAnna]

Nancy, thank you so much! I'm working on getting a numbering system in place on the site and also spread the pics over several pages instead of just one. Until then, I think what we're doing is posting here on this tread which picture you're working on. Craig called these problems to my attention and I'm working on a solution. I can still upload pics to your site if that's easier for you.

Thanks!

[AtlanaAnna]

I have the new site posted with only 10 photos per page. They are also numbered and there is a check box next to each picture where you can check off that picture if you choose it to work on. I have tried to check the ones that have been worked on but if I missed one, let me know. Thanks so much to anyone and everyone that can help with this project. The URL is:

http://www.dbxtech.com/photos/photos.htm

Sylvia Morris

[Kraellin]

hi sylvia,

that's MUCH better! thank you

also, one thing... i decided to check if the checkmark thing worked right or not. it will let you check the box, but when you return again, it's unchecked.

Craig

[fpellerin]

Hello Sylvia,

here's another one for you. If you'd like the tif, let me know if you can receive e-mails with large attachements (the one I have is slightly above the 2MB mark).

Regards,

Frank

[AtlanaAnna]

Craig,

You're right about the checkmarks. They're not working the way they were intended to work. I'll have to go back to the books and figure that one out. I so appreciate your help. I'm going to take a rare week of respite during the first week of November and I'm going to see my mother's sister who has also been diagnosed with Alzheimer's but she is still in the early stages. I'm hoping to carry some of these restored old pictures to her.

Frank,

I can receive large file sizes over my highspeed connection if you want to send the .tif. Thanks so much for your help.

Sylvia Morris

[Kraellin]

sylvia,

you're welcome.

i decided to revisit the one i was working on. it seemed off to me and i changed the background on it. this new one is more of a normal restore.

Craig

edit: after posting the first one here i decided it could be a bit better. so, here's another.

[AtlanaAnna]

Oh, I like this one!

[Kraellin]

sylvia,

thank you. it's looks better when it's not in such a big format. too many things show up at this size

Craig

[fpellerin]

Another one done. I'll e-mail you a higher resolution version of the file.

Frank