OPR: Hand Repair

[irshgrlkc]

Hi All,

Here is my most recent OPR (Operation Photo Rescue) project. I'd like some advice how to best tackle repairing the baby's hand in this picture while retaining a photographic quality to it (ie., not painterly). I've attached the original, my current progress and a close-up of the hand. Once I repair this hand I will use it to restore the missing hand.

Also feel free to critique my progress to date, I can take it. I'm not doing this for me, but for the person this photo belongs to, so I want my errors pointed out.

Thanks in advance!

P.S.: For those who feel the sepia tint should be kept, I created a swatch from the original and will submit a B&W and a sepia version for them to choose from.

[Kraellin]

that's going to be tricky on the hand. the severe transition between arm and fingers makes it even more so. i've been playing around with it a bit and am not real happy with anything yet. i can fix the arm pretty easily. it's all that dark on the fingers that will drive you nuts. the texture is gone in a lot of places. i can get a pretty good outline of where i think the fingers and nails are, but reducing the dark to light while bringing back the texture is the trick.

some things i've tried so far are, simple cloning, airbrushing, push (smudge), dodge, masking the hand and applying all of the aforementioned plus using color changer to try to even things up. my best results so far are with clone and dodge. i've also tried the lighten/darken brush in psp... very similar to dodge and burn on a black and white. i even tried making some custom brushes for airbrushing, but that needs some work yet and psp xi seems to have some bugs in saving these brush tips. i can save them ok, but i seem to lose some options when i do. so, i gave up on that one.

it might be that a mask of the fingers and then erasing all but the main outlines would work. then just add some clone or noise back in and then maybe some shadowing with burn. but havent tried that yet.

[solitear]

Hi Kerry.....

This is a tough one....... the below picture is a very "down and dirty" but under 1 minute job on the baby's hand......

I clicked on the Red Channel

I loosely selected the hand and copied and pasted it back into the RGB Channel

Then clicked on Layers and set layer blend to screen then went Image > Adj. > Curves and lightened it.....

Did a Ctrl + J to duplicate that layer and adjusted opacity

Then I selected Background layer and clicked the icon to add an adjustment layer and choose Channel Mixer and clicked Monochrome

Clicked back on Layers tab then went Layers > Merge Down

Now you have your Background Layer in Black/White and 2 "hand" layers to adj. opacity on - I erased any "overspray" around hands

Not that great but very quick.....

Beth

[irshgrlkc]

Thank you both for taking the time to answer my question.

Very clever idea, Beth, to lighten the black stuff. In the process it seems to help in determining fingers from shadows as well.

I think once I accomplish that I will take up your suggestion, Craig, and carefully clone and noise. I have found that a 5% uniform noise then gaussian blurred at 1.5 seems to replicate the original photo texture/noise quite well. I am just leery about reconstructing the hand completely as I am DEFINITELY not an artist.

I'll post my progress, am hoping to have this done by the weekend.

Thank you again!

[Kraellin]

ok, i'm fairly happy with this. clone, lighten/darken brush, dodge and burn, push, clone, clone, clone. all clones and push done a blank layer. all lighten/darken and dodge and burn done on duplicate layers of the original.

[nebgranny]

Just a thought.I have looked and looked and wonder if the what might look like a tooth is actually damage to the photo. I personally have not seen a tooth like that during the teething stage. Raised 4 kids.
Also it looks to me like the fingers are bent under not sticking out ..except for the little finger. Does anyone else see the hand that way?? Neb

[solitear]

I think I agree with nebgranny about the tooth....... when I looked really close at it without the tooth, the mouth looked more natural........

I placed a hand over the damaged hand that looked most like what I thought I saw....... fingers extended except just at the fingertips (index and middle fingers) where they look to be bent down and flattened a little so as to be able to push him/herself up.......

I've done some pictures for OPR and I know they say not to use other people's body parts (which I can understand) but I did do one for them where I used my father's bent knee for a damaged dad's knee and my legs (when I was a toddler) on a little girl's destroyed legs..... probably shouldn't have but...... GAaaaahhhhh....... it was too tempting......

oxoxo
Beth

[Kraellin]

i'd say that's pretty close, beth. and a better job of it than mine. mine has no wrist and no well defined hand, just arms into fingers. lol. ah well, back to the drawing board.

[Michelle K]

Great job Beth!

[solitear]

Thanks Craig and Michelle......... once the thing was lightened (way too much I might add) I could at least see what looked like hand and fingers.... with that I just took an old photo of one of my childrens' hand and did the unthinkable....... copied / pasted it over the tots hand.......

I think Lon Chaney said in an old spooky movie, "I can make the most unique monsters"......... that's exactly what I do when trying to clone and paint things in...... so I cheated......

oxoxo
Beth

[Kraellin]

ok, i put the hand/wrist back in.

[solitear]

Craig....... that's perfect !!!!! And you didn't cheat....... really, you did an excellent job and it matches perspective-wise whereas mine was a bit skewed....

oxoxo
Beth

[Kraellin]

beth, thank you but i'd probably not have even caught it if it werent for your work. i really had to look beyond all that black and find the edges. so, thank you too

[chillin]

excellent work beth,

[solitear]

Thank you, chillin...... but, yours is truly excellent....... I think yours is the baby's hand..... WoW....

Beth