Removing shadows

[Gary Richardson]

Sorry to hear about your daughters wedding picture loss. Good luck with your project.

Anything else we can do to help, just ask. Can't guarantee we'll be able to resolve all problems, but there's usually someone here who'll have a handle on how to fix things.

Best wishes,

Gary

[Flora]

Hi,

Thanks Gary ... The neckline is something we women probably pay more attention to ... Cass and myself were the only ones to worry about it ...

Pam,

I obviously didn't read your first post as I should have ... that's why I made the silly question about adding the groom to the photo ... sorry ...

Sorry your daughter's wedding pictures got lost ... she must be very sad about it...

I finished working on your picture ...

To remove the shadows I did the following:

* Duplicated the Background Layer.

* Created a Curves Adjustment Layer and tweaked it as in Attachment 2.

* Making sure I was working on the Curves Layer's Mask I inverted it (Ctrl+I) so it became black and carefully painted on it with a soft white Brush, changing its Opacity according to the needs ... I painted on the darker part of your daughter's lovely face and on the darker shadows on her dress. Attachment 3 Merged Down.

* Duplicated the Merged Layer, set its Blending to Screen and, keeping the Alt key pressed, I clicked on the 'Add Layer Mask' button at the bottom of my Layers' Palette... The mask created was Black= Hide All so, again, using a soft white brush, I carefully painted over the still darker shadows on the dress.

* I lowered the Screen Layer's Opacity to 75-80% .... The dress' shadows had faded considerably ... I didn't want to remove them completely because it would have looked unnatural ... I just used the Healing Brush along the shadows' edges to blend them better in.

* The corrected shadows on the dress had lost part of their saturation so I created a blank Layer set to Color on top, sampled color from the dress and painted over the 'corrected' shadows parts.

Hope this helps ...

[PJM]

Hi again
I cannot give a big enough thankyou for the help with my daughter's wedding photo. Thanks to this help, she now has a precious photo of her wedding day again - with the promise of a couple more because of what you have taught me ( special thanks to Flora). I started learning Photoshop CS2 because of this disaster of photo loss and didnt imagine the result would be so wonderful. I intend to continue learning from the books I have accumulated plus from the tips I know I can now get from the wonderful people in RetouchPro. It has opened up a new world for me. Once again many thanks to you all
Cheers
Pam

[Cameraken]

Hi Pam
Welcome to RetouchPro

I have just realised that I forgot to post my effort. So here is mine.
I found some more detail in the dress. Hope you like it.

Ken

[PJM]

Hi Cameraken
It certainly does has more detail in the dress - how did you manage that. Thankyou - it amazes me how you all do these things so quickly. I have been made to feel really welcome here by so many people - to think I hesitated about joining because I am such a novice

[Cameraken]

Hi Pam
Thanks for your kind comments.

Adding more detail to the dress is easy.

Image > Adjustments > Equalize

That’s It. Easy eh.

The décolleté.
I used the copy flip paste method.

Select the neck and dress from the right side
Copy and paste to a new layer
Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal
Now move into position on the left side.
Then adjust levels/curves/opacity to make it blend in.

The other main thing to do is make the man’s hand match his face

Create a new blank layer and set blending mode to color.
Pick a colour from the face and paint onto the blank layer to match the hand to the face.
You can also use this layer to paint more colour into the Flowers.

Hope this Helps.


Ken

[hashpipe]

Hello, looking into starting my own restoring business so i thought i would give this one a try.

[PJM]

Hi again
my next challenge I have set myself is faded colour so if I get stuck I will ask for help again. The different methods people used for my daughters photo let me know that there is a lot of help out there
cheers
Pam

[makeovermagic]

Pam, I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's wedding pictures. I thought I would give your picture a try. I've never done this type of work before.

MOM

[studioj]

Well Pam, I'm new here, or new too, like you, but not new on Wedding pictures.

It's sad that the first pics are lost, but you can be very exited on create a great new picture of their wedding, that could make you fell like a Fireman who rescues somebody, really

Also, I'll tell you about my self, I work as a ad designer for a newspaper, so, we allways have lot of work to do, and don't have time to learn about photoshop on practice. But what I did with my wedding picture it's do changes every day, if I have 5 free minutes, then I took a hand and enhance, then the other next day.

The thing it's, our living room's wedding portrait was a gift to my wife on our first anniversary... YES!!! I took a year to make it great, but it is now.

So don't worry about something it's not going great, just take a breath and doit again.

There are a lot of filters, a lot of brushes, a lot of adjustement layers, and they all can be fun to try on this picture. Don't be scare to do anything, as you can see, here are a lot of people who nicely help in whatever you want.

[PJM]

Yes I am finding out that good things take time and I must say that my picture has worked out really well thanks to all the help I have received. I think that as a 59 year old grandmother of 12 with no photographic background whatsoever and not much computer experience either that if I can do this (albeit with help) then anyone can if they just take the time and dont give up when it gets hard. I have learnt there are a lot of people here who are only to willing to help.
Cheers
Pam