[Mark Adams]

A family member just came up with an envelope full of scanned snapshots dating back more than 50 years. They wanted me to scan them and copy them to CD's to be distributed to other family members. I scanned them and couldn't resist working on them. It was a rush job -- 21 pics overnight, so now I'm tinkering in earnest.

This one was not the most challenging, but it's the only studio portrait in the bunch, so I keep coming back to it. Here is the original and my current working version. I've got probably about 4 hours in this print. I'm not sure about the shape of the vignette or the sepia, but I'm just plain not happy about the cloudy/grainy quality it has.

What do you think so far?

Mark

[grannysdc]

Mark,
Hmmm... I am just a beginner at working with photoshop. You have lots of pictures to practice on and are off to a good start .. I think 4 hours does seem a little excessive for this picture though.. here is my version of your picture.. maybe 1 1/2 hrs total.. I am sure that others here will be glad to show you how to improve on what you have thus far.. all I did was change the background, smooth out a few things, cloned a lil and healed some... Oh Yea, sepia toned..
Granny

[Mark Adams]

That is better grannysdc. I really like the way you smoothed the face and am most impressed with the detail you brought out in the hat. The background also looks better. I had pretty much decided to let it go in favor of covering it up with the vignette, but I'm reconsidering after looking at your example.

I'm not so crazy about the loss of detail in the dress, but given the tradeoff between smoothing and the cloudy stuff that's there now, I would probably go for smooth. Was that healing brush?

And when I say 4 hours, I'm talking about a lot of trial and error and staring at the thing. I haven't done this sort of work in a couple of years and I was not that good at it to begin with.

Thanks for the help on this. I do appreciate it.

Mark

[irshgrlkc]

You may want to try a de-noising program to tone down the fuzziness. I used Neat Image. Other than that I think you've done an admirable job, keep up the good work!

[grannysdc]

Kerry,
I finally downloaded "Neat Image" ... It might be over-smoothed now, but, I am experimenting... all I can say is WOW what a difference!
Thanks for the suggestion... I am now sorry that I waited soooo long to download a Plug-in

[NYBOB]

Here is my try.levels,neat image,cloning, sharpen & sepia tone.

Bob

[geru]

Thought I'd give it a try....Curves, Clone, Scratch Remover, and noise reduction.

[Mark Adams]

Okay, I jumped on the Neat Image bandwagon. It runs pretty well under Wine -- who new?

Anyway, here it is after another hour or so of me slaving over it. I may keep working to even out the background (especially on the right side) and details are elusive. I can't get the details you guys are getting in the hat or the chair.

Other than that, she's looking pretty good if I do say so myself.

I appreciate all the input folks. Keep it coming.

Makr

[DCobb]

This is my try:

-curves
-patch tool
-cloning
-sharpen
-applied color tone

dc

[roger_ele]

Hi Mark,

I played with this a little to get the feel for what aproach might work the best. The least damage is in the mid tones so first I thought I would use the good middle tone detail to create the dark tones in the dress (I think that is the hardest area to get natural because of the sivering in the dark shadows of the dress) - then I looked at the channels ... this is how I would start, this is without any art work appplied to the image.

The blue channel has the best highlight detail. I think the red channel has the most natural dark tones (although they are light), so this is what I did.

-Created a blank layer, used apply image to past in the blue channel from the background layer
-Created a new blank layer, used apply image to paste in the red channel
-Turned off the visiblity of the pasted layers, Control-alt-tilde (~) to select the luminosity (same as control clicking on the rgb compsit in the channels pallet/window) - clicked on the pasted red channel layer while the selection was still active and clicked on the new mask to make a mask from the selection, inverted the mask to blaock the highlights
-selected the image (not the mask) on the pasted red channel layer and did control-L to open levels and darken the dark tones
-selected the mask - same layer and control-L to adjust the brightness of the mask

Again, this is with no art work yet, it brings out detail in the light areas and makes the shadows more natural.

The solid black adjustment layer at the top of the stack is in color blend mode, so it changes it too black and white. I put it there so I could turn it on and off to judge if what I was doing was best as I was playing with the image.

Best of luck,
Roger

[chillin]

I started with opacity layers mix green-100%, blue-30%, red-25%.
Next I worked with the face & then the rest. a lot of masking.

[Mark Adams]

Originally Posted by roger_ele

Hi Mark,

Hi Roger.

I've been working on this for about two hours now and I just can't seem to get it to happen. Your version considerably improves the silvering at the bottom of the image and nicely smoothes the shadows and texture of the dress. Mine still shows a lot of mottling. There's noise too, but I'm dealing with that as a separate issue.

I should also say that I'm working with the GIMP which is not a Photoshop equivalent, but I can access the RGB and LAB layers through decomposition. (See attached.)

Regrettably, my (cruder, more labor intensive) method seems to be getting me better results. At least that's the way it appear on my monitor for now.

Thanks for the time on this. Working with these layers seems very sophisticated to me and I wish I could get a handle on it. I appreciate the attention.

Mark

[Mark Adams]

Originally Posted by chillin

I started with opacity layers mix green-100%, blue-30%, red-25%.
Next I worked with the face & then the rest. a lot of masking.

The dress looks really good chillin. What did you do in the "dress_ret" and "dress_ret" mask layers?

Mark

[chillin]

The dress_ret is cloning & layer opacity 86%
The dress_ret_mask is healing with a brush opacity from 6 to 21

[roger_ele]

Mark - you are welcome, I hope it is a help. There are multiple ways to do anything in this game and no right way. My first impression looking at the last photo you posted is that the dark areas are too dark, there is dark damage and then not so dark areas, they are now all dark. I think you have gotten heavy handed looking for the image to 'pop'.

I have 30 years printing in a black and white darkroom, one of the things I have learned is to look at the highlights/shadows/midtones seperately. In other words, just looking at her light skin tone, is there delicacy and roundness or is it grey, or lack roundness, do you see a highlight within it? The midtones feel full with shape, not garrish or flat? The shadows in the dress hold detail and feel natural? Levels work part way - but in this case a little playing with curves is probably best. I don't know Gimp (where else can you say 'I don't know Gimp' :-) ), but if I can be of any help I would be glad too.

Waxing philosophical, it is a little like playing a musical instrument, active listening is totally required - play with the image, keep a light touch, and the image will teach you. We never know it all and the next image teaches us again. That is why, I think Chillin's retouch is so good.

Chillin, I want to complement you on your retouch - excellent!

Regards,
Roger