I can never get this one right.

[justintu]

Hello Everyone!

I have been reading the Challenges section for a couple of months now to get some tips. I have finally decided to register in hopes of getting some good advice and learn a little. (well a lot actually )
I am pretty new to Photoshop and have not been able to do this picture any justice.

Can anyone offer me any suggestions?

Thank you all very much in advance.

[justintu]

Here is the picture:

This is the original:
http://www.pbase.com/image/18076384/original

[roger_ele]

Hi justintu,

Welcome to RetouchPro

You are starting off with a difficult photo, there are a lot of different things you can do and many different ways of doing them. IMO, the first thing to do is lighten the image to normal. Might as well get used to adjustment layers from the get-go, they are that valuable. Go to the layers widow and drag the background down to the new layer icon (second from the right along the bottom of the layers window). This will duplicate the background layer onto a new layer. click on the new layer you just made to make sure it is the active layer. At the top of the layers window is a drop down list of different blending modes, change it from normal to screen. This will lighten the photo, if you want it lighter drag the layer you just made to the new layer icon, if that is too light, lower the opacity of the new layer. I attached my lighter version so you can see it.

Most of the next steps are probably cloning, maybe practice some and then post to this thread, we will all help you out.

Enjoy, Roger

[Dan B]

This is not a whole lot better but it's quick and dirty.

First I used the (image, adjustments) channel mixer and changed it to monochrome (grey) RGB set to 25,50,25 and a constant of +4
This gets rid of the yellow stains.

Then I simply used the clone tool and went over the cracks, rips and spots. This took about 10 minutes.

After that you just adjust the brightness, sharpen and then despeckle.

You can make it look much better if you spend more time cloning but this was the quick and dirty method.

http://www.webdeals.net/test/z.jpg

[justintu]

Wow, that is quite an improvement. Much better than I have been able to do so far.

Dan, thank you very much for the short tutorial and the effort you put into the picture.

I appreciate the reply Roger I will continue to work on it.

Justin