1875 picture

[cedwar]

Im looking for some help on how to tackle this picture. Help would be greatly appreciated!

-cedwar

[Kraellin]

i've got two others i'm working on currently, so am not downloading this to my drive yet. but, the first thing you want to do is to bring out the detail as much as possible. try 'curves', 'levels', 'contrast/brightness', any channel mixing you have access to, and maybe some channel splitting.

dont do any smudging or cloning or healing or sharpening yet. you want to bring out the detail first and no noise reduction yet either. get some contrast in there so you can see as much of what detail is possible to see. once you've got the detail there better, then you can start to clean things up a bit.

K.

[Flora]

Hi,

Cedwar,

Great tip from Craig ... try to 'bring out' as much as possible of the original details before doing anything else ....

I'm posting a snapshot of my workflow (attachment 2) to show you the steps I took to get an acceptable contrast ... I don't know if this will happen with the 'uncompressed' picture you'll be working on .... but for me, once I got to an acceptable contrast, I had a lot of noise/compression artifacts ...

As you can see from my workflow attachment I used Levels, Curves and Channel Mixer to get to an acceptable starting point .... I 'cleaned up' her dress and face a bit, but didn't do any other kind of restoration because it would have taken me too long to minimize the noise/compression artifacts ... I didn't try to 'reconstruct' her left eye but simply used the Patch Tool to remove the scratch on it ...

Anyway ... here is what I came up with ....

[Kraellin]

wow. that's more detail than i thought was going to come out, flora. nice! and glad to see that my recommended steps fell in line with yours i'm learnin'

Craig

[Hardeep Singh]

wow you guys do magic

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Cedwar,

Had a go with your picture. Couldn't get the contrast that Flora managed to find, (no surprises there), have attached my layer stack to give some idea of what I did.

Oh, almost forgot, Background Copy 2 is set to Multiply Blend and about 28% Opacity, (not clear from layer stack).

[Kraellin]

i dont know, gary, looks pretty darn good to me. nice job!

and flora, not having photoshop myself, in your workflow, are those 4 or 5 steps on the top with the white blocks all adjustment layers?

Craig

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks Craig. Yes those layers in Flora's stack are indeed Adjustment Layers.

[Flora]

Thank you everybody!

Gary,

Great job! ...

Craig,

Gary answered already ...
__________________

Couldn't get the contrast that Flora managed to find...

I made a new snapshot of my workflow (Attachment 1) specifying Blending and Opacity of my 'changed' Adjustment Layers (the first three are: Blending>Normal; Opacity>100%)... the red numbers refer to Attachments 2 and 3 showing the 'values' of each Adjustment Layer ...

Attachment 4 shows the result I got with those Adjustment Layers only ... I actually decreased the shadows a bit after my quick 'clean up'

[MargaretM]

I had a quick go at this old photo.
Light use of Neat Image; channels mixer to turn monochrome; multiply layer with adjusted opacity to build density; curves layer with soft light, some cloning and a grey layer to accent light and dark areas. I am not as organized as Flora in my workflow. It was so great Flora the way you showed all the details. Anyway it still has a long way to go...
MargareM

[Flora]

Hi Margaret,

... some 'blown out' whites ... but, otherwise a beautiful job!!

[Kraellin]

thanks gary, flora.

the more you explain, flora, the more i notice the differences between p-shop and psp. and the added complexities. not sure i'm ready for all that yet

Craig

[Gary Richardson]

Flora,

Thanks for the Settings, found the curves adjustments really interesting, much more radical than I would have used, (but obviously effective), must try being a bit more adventurous with my tool use.

Oh, almost forgot, thanks for your kind comments.

Gary.

[cedwar]

Im sorry I havent responded sooner, my computer has been giving me trouble since I switched to broadband... I think it got a virus between switching my antivirus subscriptions. Im having some trouble with Internet Explorer. When I bring up the thread, the messages are there but the attachments do not show.

Anyway, Im looking at them here at work, and since I do not have PS CS here, I cant do much to play around with the suggestions yet, but what you have all done is extraordinary. I cant wait to try working on it now.

I hope you can bear with me until I get this straightened out. Then Ill post some comments...

ok?

-cedwar

[Kraellin]

cedwar,

for browser troubles, get 'Hijackthis'. it can handle a LOT of junk that is targeted for your browser that the anti-virus folks cant or dont. just be careful with it. it's pretty powerful and always use the backup mode that will back everything up before it 'fixes' things.

Craig