How to smooth face and dress

[Gerald McClaren]

This is a part of the restoration of a photo of my mother. I would like to know how can I smooth out her face and the dress. When this project is completed, I will make this photo color and black and white.


Gerald McClaren

[Kraellin]

on the dress i think i'd use clone first, then mask and add a light amount of noise and blur slightly.

on the face, this would depend on how light or dark her skin really is. if it's as dark as the area around the jaw, then clone to the lighter areas, and vice versa if the other way around. but, a clone here would also be appropriate for some of it, but not all, i think. you could airbrush in the various areas, remembering to add in highlights where appropriate. you might also want to mask before airbrushing or add noise after masking and maybe blur the noise a bit for texture. i doubt there's one exact technique for this. i always kind of do these on the fly so to speak. i do a little of something, look at it and either back up, go ahead, or alter.

if you've got access to a sharpening brush, such as in psp 9, you could sharpen the eyes and maybe a few other select areas. if you dont have that brush, you could mask and then sharpen.

i really have no single approach to this sort of image. i use a lot of clone, some masks, some fine brush work, some noise or airbrush, some smudge and push...it just depends. normally, though, i start with clone to get rid of any unwanteds and even things out and maybe to transfer some texture in. from there, it just depends on how the clone worked.

i also remember seeing this image in another thread. i dont recall the link right now, but wasnt there some more detail in the face?

Craig

[Gerald McClaren]

Hi!, Kraellin, thanks for the information. I'll try and see if I can follow your instructions. It seems quite complicated, although I'm a beginner in Photoshop, I'll try my best. One forum member had turned her into black and white and color. She is an African American. As a matter of fact, he had done quite a job with this photo. Anyway, thanks again Kreallin.
P.S The thread is How to resize a photo, you'll see what the original looks like

Gerald McClaren

[Kraellin]

gerald,

you're welcome. hope it helps.

Craig

[maureeno]

Originally Posted by Gerald McClaren

This is a part of the restoration of a photo of my mother. I would like to know how can I smooth out her face and the dress. When this project is completed, I will make this photo color and black and white.


Gerald McClaren

Gerald, I have had two goes at your Mum's photo, one is a crop and the otehr full-sized. I hope I'm posting them properly. You may have to copy the link into your browser though.


Uh, oh, it dodn't work. Let me have another go...

Let's try this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...1copy2crop.jpg

And this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ouch1copy2.jpg

[Cassidy]

Looking at the photo, it would seem to me that the discolouration is also causing some distortion in the look of this photo and given that the photo is so peppered so to speak, I filled in the detail with a low opacity brush on a new layer. With regard to the dress, that was just a gaussian blur.

[Gerald McClaren]

Maureeno and Cassidy you guys had done a hell of job in helping me restore my mom photo including information. I'm a beginner at restoration and using Photoshop but with the help of wonderful people on this forum it will make me want to learn and improve my skills. Honestly, I had photoshop for a long time but I was afraid of it because it was so complicated to learn, but someone had told me about Retouch Pro and I found out that the members have a lot of experience and are always willing to help other members.

Now, Maureeno, how did you clean up the face and add color without altering her appearance. I would really like to learn your technique. Cassidy, I thank you for the info and giving the photo a try. Thanks again.


Gerald McClaren

[Billfields]

Gerald,

I know you asked about smoothing her face and dress but I would go the other way, try and add a realistic texture to get more of the photograph feel back. I started off by converting to grey scale and then to a duotone with a dark brown and pale yellow. Then back to RBG. This took care of some of the blotchy areas while still retaining something close to the original color (Which I liked). Then I used the healing patch to take texture from the best areas of the face and add it to the rest.

All that was pretty easy.

Her hair and dress both need some definition too. Here I went for the "Frankenstein" approach. I found another photo of an African American woman with a hair style that was close and took it through the above process to get the two picures to the same colors. Then it was a matter of choosing sections of hair, copying them from one picture to the other and rotating them to get them to fit. This took several layers which I later flattened into one called "hair texture" I could then adjust the opacity of the whole thing until it looked right. I did much the same with the dress, finding a picture with a pattern that was subtle but would show up. I then copied sections that would fit over the dress and faded and erased each new layer to fit. Then combined the two of them into a "Dress texture" layer and adjusted the opacity.

The rest was touch up. The skin looked a bit blotchy so I used burn, dodge and finally blur to smooth it out but it could probably have used more time on that. I also worked a bit on the eyes with dodge and burn. Then flattened the layers, added a bit of size to the canvas, choose the elliptical selection tool to get an oval with a feathering of about 30 and cut and pasted into a new file. Flattened that and the result is below. I also played with color a bit but I really like the colors as they are and the coloring just didn't look good---not good enough to put up here. I can give it another shot if you wish to see what I can get.

This is a great picture! I enjoyed working on it.

BTW--didn't you post this just recently when it was in several pieces? if so you did a great job of getting it back together!

Bill Fields

[maureeno]

Originally Posted by Gerald McClaren

Now, Maureeno, how did you clean up the face and add color without altering her appearance. I would really like to learn your technique. Thanks again.


Gerald McClaren

Gerald, I did my adjustments in PhotoImact, but they can also be done in PS.

I began by duplicating the image, then I made a selection of the dress and filled it with another patteren adjusted at low opacity.

I only worked on the duplicated image, BTW.

For your Mum's face, I sampled the forehead colours and airbrushed at low opacity the areas of her face that needed evening out.

I cloned away the section of hair at her left cheek and blurred the edges a wee bit to fit in with the background.

For her lip colour, I picked a colour I liked and brushed it on with a lower opacity soft brush and a little to her cheek area, as well.

I sampled the eye brow colour and used a soft brush (low opacity) and re-brushed the eye brow. With the same colour and a smaller brush, I ran it across her upper eyelids to highlight them.

I then took the image to a free Xero filtre plugin (Super Smooth) and then to a PhotoImact effect with gave it a grainy vignette. I'll see if I can find it in PS.

For the cropped version, I used a Watercolour effect at low levels. I believe PS has the same one, as well.

It was a little tedious, but not stressful in the least.

Maureen

PS. I also used the Dodge tool (about 50) on your Mum's white areas in her eyes and her earring.

[Nanls]

Started by adjusting curves. Used the clone tool to fill in right side of face from forehead. Gaussian blur and then back a step and used the history brush but avoided features: eyes, nose mouth. Added a layer choose a med color and painted with a soft brust at 50% to fill in. blurred that layer a couple of times and added noise. Merged layers and then dupped and set the top to Multiply added a layer mask, filled with black and painted with white low oppacity brush to bring back features. Repeated painting, etc a couple of times. Last time around gaussian blur, set to lighten and used a soft brush to remove any last dark patches, then set to darken and remove light spots. Grayscale and then duotone, back to RGB.. merged everything. Could improve with more time (isn't that always the case!)
~Nancy~