[fatimzz]

Hey all,
This is my first restoration ( on someone else's pic). I didnt read through all the replies before I started, so I am sure there's some easy stuff that I missed. I did a lot of cloning, used gaussian blur and used the history brush. And I put a little eyeliner on the right eye :p Finally, to reduce the size, I converted to lab color, did a greyscale on lightness channel and adjusted contrast and brightness. Thanks for looking...
Fatima

[klassylady25]

with no background...... and though I sent both, it should be the owners choice. I did finish cleaning up a bit more around the ears before sending it off, but left the "before ear job" up.

And that is the END to this story

[Kraellin]

candy,

looks good

for future reference, here's a tip on edges, like the edge line of his uniform where it meets the background. you can take the smudge or push (in Paint Shop Pro) tool and set it along the edge. left click once, then move the brush down the edge a ways and hit and hold down the shift key and left click again. this will 'draw a smudge' along that line from where you first clicked to where you shift-clicked.

you can only do this along straight edges. it wont follow a curve. your brush shld be relatively small. your opacity shld be medium to light in most cases but experimenting will tell you the best setting for this. where you set your cursor for the first click can also vary. sometimes i'll do this along the inner edge and sometimes the outer and sometimes right on the transition line.

in your case, on this picture, with the black of the uniform as the inner edge and the white of the background as the outer edge, i would probably try putting the cursor mostly on the white, outer part and let the smudge line erase a small part of the black uniform to give a more straight line there to the uniform.

i'm not suggesting you shld re-do this picture. this is just for future work, a new technique, tip. it's a good way to define edges like this and clean them up. i often use this near the end of the job to put a final, clean edge on transitions like this.

and, if you have a long line like the uniform line from his neck down to his shoulder and it has a slight curve to it like this one does, you can do many of these along that line, segment by segment to get the whole thing looking better. you dont have to do just one long smudge line.

i definitely see an improvement from the last image you did. so, yer doin fine just practice, practice, practice and in no time you'll be giving me tips and showing me how to improve mine

craig

[Peter S]

and here's another tip, though i dont use this one often. instead of the normal procedure for cloning, turn off all layers except one blank layer on top and the original background layer. turn OFF 'use all layers'. highlight the background layer. set your clone mark/set point on a location on the background layer you wish to start from, but, before actually cloning, highlight the blank layer and set your clone cursor EXACTLY over your set mark. then, set your clone brush opacity at 100%, hardness around 60 to 80 and hold down your left button and clone an entire area onto the black layer in one pass. this shld put an exact copy of that area on the blank layer.

Craig
you have some really great tips, but with this one wouldn't it be easier to lasso the bit your interested in, and then "New layer via copy", no messing about getting lined up exactly. Then work on that layer till satisfied.

Peter

[klassylady25]

Why don't you finish the picture and let me see the final works. I've sent mine in and was satisfied at this point. I always have access to the high resolution print, and can work on it but I needed to come to a conclusion. Art, of any form, can be infinate.........

[Kraellin]

peter,

in paint shop pro, you get two cursors with clone, one the set mark where you're cloning from, and the second is the click cursor where you're cloning to. each of these is a circle and each circle size is based on the brush size. so, it's very easy to simply put the set cursor on one layer and the click cursor on another and line them up perfectly, since they both show at all times.

candy,

well, like i said, i didnt really do the uniform because of lack of a model. i also didnt do the braid on the cap, pretty much for the same reason, but also because i just wanted to show the face. so, here we go.

also, i notice most folks that posted pics here missed on the eyes. the eyes are not looking at the camera in the original.

craig

[Kraellin]

well, candy, you asked me to post it, so, what'cha think?

craig