please advise

[Jogray]

Hi

can anyone advise me on this photograph of my cousin Lesley, how best to restore it, i want to give a print of it to each of her children, she just died, ive bought Katrin Eisman's book but it hasnt arrived yet,

thankyou so much Jo xx

[Jogray]

.......im just keeping my stupid mouth shut

[CJ Swartz]

Let's start by using a jpg file that folks here can download to see easily.


Do you know if the man and boy in the background are her father (or older brother / uncle / other close relative) and brother -- people who would be meaningful to the image and would be kept if the image was cropped?

[Jogray]

thankyou for your reply
yes the man and boy in the background are her father and brother, uncle bill and john

[Leah]

Jogray - first off, you should find that Katrin Eismann's book helps you a lot with this photo - this kind of image is exactly what she spends the first few chapters tweaking.

What I tried just as a "quick fix" (in Photoshop, although you can do much the same in other editing packages):
Added a Levels adjustment layer (opacity 75%) with the right-hand slider pulled in to the start of the histogram.
Added a number of Levels adjustment layers with not changes made to the Levels but with Blend mode set to multiply. Applied gradients to the masks of these to even out the light and dark areas from the original photo (also used layers with masks I brushed on to deal with the very light patches)
Used the Patch tool to get rid of some of the dust in the sky (at this resolution, I couldn't tell whether the light-coloured specks in the field were all flowers or if some of them were dust, so I left them alone.

Obviously, working on a higher resolution scan you'd be able to do far more. but hope this helps as a start.

[Jogray]

what would the best resolution to scan in be ?
I'll re-scan it and follow your instructions

[Leah]

Partly it depends on (1) your scanner (2) what size you want to end up printing it out.

Firstly the scanner - quite a lot of older scanners claim to scan up to, say, 1200 ppi, but when you read the small print you find that they only "really" scan up to about 300 ppi and then interpolate to get higher "resolution". If your scanner is like this then there is no point scanning at over 300 ppi - Photoshop and similar products generally have a better interpolation algorithm for scaling up the image later than you get in the scanner and this gives you more control.

If your scanner "really" scans at over 300ppi, then think about what size you want to output the finished photo. As a rule of tumb, to produce output the same size as the original you want to scan at 300ppi, to produce output twice the size you want to scan at 600ppi, etc. You want to strike a balance between getting a good resolution for printing and keeping the file size down to a manageable level.

If your scanner doesn't really scan at over 300ppi then just scan it at 300ppi and size it up later in Photoshop if necessary.

If you are scanning at over 300ppi you may want to adjust the ppi in the finished image later before printing, but there's no need to worry about that at this stage.

[Jogray]

i scanned it in at 600, i have a hewlett packard all in one....also have an epson perfection.
sizing it up in adobe ? would that be in image size then just change the dpi in there ?
( i cant wait for this katrin eisman book to get here, am really excited , how sad is that ? lol)

[KenB]

Here's my attempt at your photo.

First I duplicated the background layer twice set to multiply blend mode, then I applied layer masks to both duped layers applying black to white gradiants to selectively apply the multiply blend mode. Flattened and added a new overlay layer selectively painting with black or white at 15% opacity to darken and lighten stubbborn spots. Added some noise to reduce the white sky and added a border.


Ken

[Jogray]

I cant believe how kind everyone is here thankyou so much!

I love this forum I'm so chuffed i found it !

is it possible to show you all some of my work for your options

is it best to post a url to where it is ?

[Leah]

It's best to post a reduced-sized version here (that way when someone looks back at the thread in a few months the image will still be here and they won't be left wondering what we were all on about) but include a url to a full-sized version stored on your own web space if you'd like us to look at that. Everyone here is really friendly and helpful, certainly on the restoration and retouching side, so don't be afraid to ask any questions as you go along!

[CJ Swartz]

To show another option, here is a colorized version. Used Multiply layer blend and then used the Levels adjustment layers to adjust colors -- using it once to bring up the red/yellows and using a layer mask to mask out the grass, then another Levels adjustment to bring up the greens, masking out the non-green areas. (My masking may not be exact, but you can get the general idea -- once you get the general idea of masking. )

I cropped the image to reduce some of the sky and to emphasize your aunt.

[Jogray]

CJ I am truly amazed at what you have done )

her daughters are going to be too, I'm sure they'll be touched to know that people from all over have spent the time with this picture
You wouldnt believe the folder ive got full of black and whites, i cant wait to get stuck into them as soon as i read all the posts here and my new book when it arrives.

[CJ Swartz]

Jogray,

You're going to have a lot of pleasure working on all of your photos! The members here all know how much there is to learn -- at the beginning, and still now, so most will always be glad to point you to info and techniques that you can add to your personal bag of skills.

Take a look at our Tutorial area and the tips sections. Especially look at the Challenges (both new and old sections) for Retouching and Restoration -- you can find a photo that has similar problems to one you're working on and see how others attempted to deal with those problems.

I'll echo Leah on how valuable Katrin Eismann's book is -- did you get the new release with our "janitor's" work (Doug Nelson) included?

Welcome to RetouchPro -- I've learned a lot here, and you can also.

[GOLDCOIN]

Jogray....
We'll glad you found us....

Leah ,KenB & C.J. did a great job, like the color version. Don't have her book yet either, but will in the near future.

Here mine....

[Jogray]

My cousin's (the subject of the picture) husband came to visit the other day, first time ive seen him since she died, he was so flattered/touch that you'd all taken the time to do the picture, i put them all on disk for him thankyou again

the reason ive been so quiet is because my Katrin Eisman book finally came, i havent put it down since I'm reading it over and over to make sure it all sinks in