Do I have to be a sketch artist?

[ExclamPt]

Friends,

It seems I am often restoring photos with missing or damaged facial features. Not being a sketch artist, I don't know a very good way to approach such problems.

I often play Dr. Frankenstein and steal parts from other photos, but this is not always ideal.

For example, I am now doing a group photo, part of which is attached. The two leftmost figures were badly faded with damaged mouths, eyes, and noses.

What would you do in this case?

Thanks for your help.

!

[DannyRaphael]

Disclaimer: My sketching skills are nothing to shout about and I don't do professional retouching, though I do dabble in it on occasion, mostly as favors for friends/relatives who prefer to not pay for the services of one highly skilled in the craft.

In this case I'd resort to a little Dr. Frankenstein body part reconstruction.

Hope this gets the conversation going...
~Danny~

[ExclamPt]

By the way, that's pronounced frank-en-SHTEEN

!

[RAdams]

Danny,
again I'm not able to dowload the file above
group photo.jpg.
This seems to happen at least once daily for me.
I am always logged in when I come on, but just to make sure, I logged out, and logged back in...still unable to download.
any suggestions?
thanks
Randy
(still new!)

[Leah]

RAdams - are you running a firewall or ad blocker? If you are then these often cause problems if you don't have them configured right (the ad blocker because RP opens the photo in a new window which makes some software think it's a pop-up ad, the firewall because of some technical stuff Doug has had to do on the server to prevent image theft). Both these problems can normally be fixed by making the right settings in whatever program you are using, though.

[RAdams]

Thanks Leah,
I actually dont run any of those kind of programs. But now (as has happened before) it works just fine...for some unknown reason.
My cookies must be getting messed up or something
thanks again,
Randy
Taiwan

[Vikki]

Whenever I get something like this, I advise the customer what will have to be done ( "frank-en-SHTEEN" thing.). Sometimes they say " just leave that part as it is and fix the rest". Often, customers are only concerned about one particular individual in the photo, and may even suggest cropping the others out.

Sometimes I get the "go ahead".

BTW, I used to be a sketch artist until I got a computer. Now I never draw unless it's something like this.