My Dad's only picture of his parents

[Sheri Medford]

Candice, Very nice job. I love the background, my original try was fake looking. It looks like you used a lighting effect instead of airbrush like I did. I just learned about omni lighting so I need to try it.

Thanks, Sheri

[Sheri Medford]

I found the original photo so I will load it for you to see.

[Kraellin]

excellent, sheri

here's one based on the original.

i ran two different passes of byRo's degrunge on this. added a bit of contrast/brightness, did a little airbrushing on a separate layer, a very, tiny bit of 'push' and a curves.

i mostly ignored her dress and the background. if you were going to colorize this, i'd not do much with the dress until you wanted to colorize. it seems to be a sort of light, summer print, but it could also be just noise/dirt/smudging that is giving all that variation. so, depending on how you wanted to go from here would determine what i'd want to do or not do to the background and her dress.

craig

[bart_hickman]

I like the smooth skin on this one, but it looks like the faces have been blurred too much and the eyes are poking through the blurriness. I think a little easier on the face blurring looks better. I took a swipe at the original too. Probably similar to what I did last time except I used a gradient map to give it an old-timey look. The shadows are sepia and the highlights are cyan/blue.

Bart

[Kraellin]

bart,

yeah, i saw it as soon as i posted it. i'm becoming used to just posting things up and then coming back later and seeing it's not done. it's really quite obvious now. i knew it was a little off when i was working on it, but now it looks REALLY off. lol. i gotta walk away from these for 24 hours before posting.

craig

[Kraellin]

ok, this shld be a little better. i started over, ran only one pass of the degrunge, did a tiny bit of airbrush and then a high pass sharpen.

craig

edit: didnt like that one either...still too spotty. so i ran digi noise removal, some lighten/darken, and a little cloning on top of the last one.

[bart_hickman]

Now you're talkin'! That one looks pretty good. I have the same problem--I'll post something I could swear looks good and then I look at it in the post and I think it looks terrible.

I have to remember to flip back and forth to the original to keep my bearings.

Bart

[Kraellin]

thanks bart,

it could still stand some work...some noise reduction here and there, a clean up of her outfit...and his. i kind of like the background on this, but the contrast is poor for the images of the people. and when i start getting paid for these, i'll start finishing them

and yes, i've all too often posted something only to see the flaws the next time i look. i tell others to walk away all the time and then post stright up, myself. it's a practice well worth disciplining oneself on and there are a number of methods that can help. the most obvious is to simply save and quit that image. another is to turn the image upside down or mirror it for a while. this can give one a fresh look. another, and the far more tricky one, is to develop the ability to erase in your mind everything you've seen prior to the current state the image is in. and that's the real trick... seeing it newly, in a new unit of time, without any 'after images' of what it looked like before. it's more of a skill than some might think; certainly more of one than i used to think. but it's a skill worth developing....and obviously i havent yet

craig