Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

[nebgranny]

In Katrin's book I did just peek,
But now I'm sleepy and to bed I go,
What did I read?? I just don't know.

So back to retouch pro I go
To ask a favor of a pro.
I want to learn how to get pictures clear
Can someone out there be a dear,
And lead me to a place in her book
Where I can find help and take a look?

So once again You see my request,
if you can help please be my guest
Direct me to a page where I can meet my quest,
to make my pictures be the best!!

Well better go to bed..I am so tired getting silly.
But seriously I understand each photo has a life of it's own, I try and use levels and curves and make some improvements , but it seems to me they are not as clear and with detail as they could be. I would love some help and I know she has to have some direction in her book. Third Edition of Restoration and Retouching.

Thanks Neb
I will post one I did . It needs help I know.

[klassylady25]

Shhh Sweet dreams

[philbach]

I thought your poem was really sweet; your restoration very neat...

Well I did only a few things to your retouch. To your photo to increase the contrast on the right side of the photo I used a levels adjustment layer. That comes with a layer mask. I used the levels sliders just focusing on the man and background to the right side of the photo. I then filled the mask with black so you couldn't see the mask effect on the photo and then painted the right side of the mask with white to bring out the adjustments on that side.

After that I sharpened the photo.

[nebgranny]

Hi Phil:
Thanks for the poem response. Cute...
I am going to go and try the technique and will post later today after I get back from work. It looks really good!!
Neb
I appreciate the response.

[Daviskw]

Such talented people... I would have to work all night to make a poem like that... and I would still misspell half the words.

Anyway....no better than Phil I see but may as well post anyway. Mostly the same techniques.... used curves adjustments to try and even light.

I did try to sharpen the features some but with little success.

Butch

[byRo]

My first step here, before doing the light
was to get the nice folks to all stand up right;
Distort, Lens is the tool, choose "extend edges",
that will save you some work later on with the hedges

That step has left us some white on the border
to help to fix that, a good clone is in order.

The next step, now, is to look at the panels
and go to the tab that will show you the channels.
Although this image seems devoid of all hue,
'tis strange to find out, the best channel is blue!

And now let's turn to the problem with light,
too dark on the left, too much on the right.

Levels, gamma zero thirty for the man with the glasses
But we'll need a good mask to protect the young lasses.

And now for the mask, how to paint?
if neither side-to-side nor up-down it ain't
Just use a gradient of the radial kind;
Are you following? Plese, don't get left behind.

Just click on your mouse, up there at right-top,
then drag to the centre and there you can stop.
Oops! Ain't that too much? Is a question to ask.
A tip to fix that is to use curves on the mask.

---------------

I had started out with intent on a Lim'rick
Didn't seem right, so abandoned the gimmck.
The retouch is done,
the poem was fun
All pretty and witty and rythmic.

Rô

[Daviskw]

Great stuff Ro....

[nebgranny]

Can you help with this one please. This is the last one in the group I have been working on. What technique to get the colors back? Is it possible to get the green foliage back? I foliage using a levels adjustment and curves with not much success. Neb

[Gilbear]

Had a quick go at your problem, see if this looks better... LAB conversion to remove color cast and selective color enhancement. Needs some more work work but not much time tonight.

[Daviskw]

Hi Neb

I used levels for the basic color correction. Like you I could not get the green back so I picked a few shades of green and applied a gradient map. Then used the mask to paint green in where I thought It should go.

Butch

[Kraellin]

this last pic you posted, neb, is quite interesting. i kept looking at it and looking at it and thought for a long while that it was a partially colorized image. but when i started playing with color balance on it, i began to think otherwise. there actually is green in the foliage that can be brought out and the dresses actually do start to come back to something believable.

so, that was the main thing i did here, color balance. i kept adjusting this back and forth and any time i'd get something that i thought was close, i'd do a copy merge and save as a new layer. then, i'd turn that new layer off and work on the original again. i ended up making about 4 or 5 of these copy merge layers.

i then went through all these copy merge layers, turning them on and off individually to see which i actually liked now compared to the others. i found two that were different from each other but that i thought were fairly good on the color balance. i left these on and set the top one of these two to soft light and did a another copy merge to new layer on those.

this was now my working image.

on this, i ran a curves layer and did another copy merge.

and on that i ran an unsharp mask at 2/100/5, a clarify at 2 and another adjustment layer of highlights/midtones/shadows. and that was it.

you shld understand too that the photograph was taken by an amateur. the woman in the middle's face is in shadow while the other two are in light. it was slightly out of focus and not composed all that well, being taken too distant to really show up the focus, the women.

and that's something that all retouchers and restorers shld be aware of when they do their work. sometimes what you're trying to correct isnt due to damage of the original; it's that the original wasnt done right to begin with.

p.s. i'm already looking at what i did and thinking i may have pushed the green too much, but i'll post it anyways as reference.

[Daviskw]

Good job craig

[philbach]

I used levels to correct the photo. The white eyedropper on the lady on the left's glove, and the black eyedropper on the middle lady's hat. I sharpened some.

[Lasa]

I thought you all where crazy..take the caste off and ta-da..was I wrong.
I think this was colorized or enhanced at some point. the colores are like randomly flying around..the middle dress color goes up into her chin..exact color of the handbag. The green on the left woman is too there. the flowers in the background some have color same flower beside it doesn't..isloated green sploches.

Anyway this is what I did..I corrected (fiddled) each channel (individually)with the level adjustment. That brought out the colors bigtime.
Then tried to control these wild colors with the color select and hue/sat adjustment.

Lasa

[Kraellin]

thanks, butch.

but i wasnt happy with it. i definitely had too much green in there. so, this is the 2nd version. i took the one i'd already posted and did another color balance on it then added a bit of clarify. looks better to me. the bad part of doing that is compressing an already compressed image and entering more artifacting.

[philbach]

Much Better, Craig. Good Improvement.

[Kraellin]

thanks, phil.

i like yours too, except i think i'd desaturate just a bit the reds in the middle ladies' dress and the purse on the camera right.