question about next step in my current retouch.

[angelomcm]

Good day to you all.

I am Angelo, and I have the task of recovering many family pictures.
I am new to this forum, and hope to one day contribute myself.
Obviously I am very new to restoration and enjoy it a great deal.

I have come across a really bad picture, and had to rebuild many
aspects. I have been removing alot of artifacts and bigger tears,
And I wish to redo the textures. I am just not very confident
as to what technique to use to, for example, fix the skin or
the tiny fisures on clothing. (Source pic is relatively small).
I have failed using the standard patch/clone/spot tools.
Also duplicating the layer and moving it a few pixels in combination
with the history tool did not give satisfactory results.

I hope someone can perhaps suggest the next step to try, I would
really appreciate the effort. I have uploaded a sample of the picture
to imageshack for all interested to give an idea on the extend of the problem.

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/9852/exampled.jpg

Besides that, I was thinking about smoothing up the parts I had to add (like
2nd pair of the legs from left) with smudge to blend it more in, and generally
do the same to blend in the foresty parts. But thats all for later..
Thanks for reading this far.

[TommyO]

Angelomcm,

Welcome to RetouchPro ! Your image is a good candidate for a rather simple technique that can be used as an alternate to cloning/healing. It involves cleaning an entire layer with a filter, hiding it, then painting back only the scratched areas with a fine brush. The best filter is generally the Dust & Scratches filter. However, others can be used depending on the problem.

- Copy your work in progress to a new layer.
- Blur the layer with the Dust & Scratches layer. Refine D&S settings until you see no scratches. Over do it just a little.
- Now you have your choice of several methods.
a. Create a mask for the layer, invert the mask, paint on the mask with a soft white brush where there are scratches. This reveals the D&S effect, hiding the scratch.
b. Create a history state of the D&S layer. Paint with the history brush on the WIP layer to reveal the D&S effect, hiding the scratch.

Either way works fine. With the mask, you have the ability to easily tweak with opacity, more brush strokes, etc.... plus being able to see where you've painted. This method works good when the problem areas are small or fine. Not as well with larger areas.

There are certainly many other methods, but this one is rather straight forward and easy to remember. It also works well on retouching new photographs, where there may be small specks, imperfections, etc.

[Flora]

Hi Angelo!

Welcome to RetouchPRO from me too

Great tip from Tommy and here a very good Tutorial on that tip.

For

Originally Posted by angelomcm

... smoothing up the parts I had to add (like 2nd pair of the legs from left)...

try using a softer (fuzzier) Clone Tool brush or, in my opinion, better still use a soft Heal Brush set to 'Replace' ... It works like the Clone Tool but keeps in consideration the surrounding texture resulting in better blending in.

[angelomcm]

Hello,

These pieces of advise were really good and useful.
Thank you very much.

[Flora]

You are welcome angelomcm!

..And thank you for your feedback!!!