Another one for Craig

[Britsdad]

Hi all,
Here's another one of "mine" for Craig, being as he likes them. It's a photo of a friend with her mother. They had a hard life after her father was killed at the beginning of world war 2.
Her mother worked in the munitions factories around Pontefract in Yorkshire. As you can probably tell she also made most of their clothes as well.
Anyway back to the photo It was made as a postcard and I've scanned it, and as you can see, the writing on the other side has made indentations through to the face side, seen mainly down the dark dress. Is it just a matter on clone, heal ect or is there a better way?
John

[Rock151]

Hi, I gave it a shot.

I first made the photo black and white. I then used the healing brush tool for most of the marks on the two subjects. I then duplicated the image, used the Dust and Scratches filter ( In the noise filter) to remove the spots in the back ground. I masked that layer and brought back the people in the photo. I then added a little sharpness using the high pass filter. Next, I added a gaussian blur to add a slight soft foucus to the subject's skin. Finally, I opened a hue/ saturation adjustment layer and colorized to bring back a sepia tone.

[philbach]

Well I used the healing brush to remove the marks on the dress, but there were numerous other scratches and what not that I treated with cloning and blurring etc.

Towards the end I used neat image to remove grain and finally I sharpened the image.

[Britsdad]

Nice job Rocco ....I like how you've got the sharpness spot on.
That's basically what I'm doing now.....(just takes a lot longer when you're working with a 90meg image on a laptop ) I'll have to finish it tomorrow, it's about time I went to the pub
John
Edit:--posted at the same time Phil nice job.....I seem to have quite a lot of noise on the full size image as well, I'll sort that out later.

[Kraellin]

nice pic, britsdad, and nice story.

clone, airbrush, push with a usm 2/100/5 near the end.

[Dave.Cox]

Nice job Kraellin.

I think that is still need a level adjustment though.

[Britsdad]

Nice jobs Craig and Dave...here's my finished effort...I left all the original colour in the pic and worked from there with clone, heal ect. There was a lot of crap on there just took some time but I like how it's turned out Now I might have a go at colourizing it One question tho' is it better to desaturate it first or to work on top of the original colour?
John

[Kraellin]

nice one, dave. just one thing on yours and particularly if you're going to go straight black and white... leave just a little of that white in the black dress. it adds a bit of texture/grain which looks more natural than a completely black matte type finish.

thanks, britsdad

yours is well done also. i see you opted to take out that dark area in the top corners. choices, choices, choices (and no, that wasnt a criticism. i debated that one too.)

as for colorizing, vikki is our resident expert on that. i dont really have enough experience in the area to know for sure. my inclination would be to leave it like it is rather than go black and white, but that's just guessing.

[Dave.Cox]

I find that the best way to colorize is to start from black and white, and then use hue saturation. check the colorize box. (Of course, when you check the colorize box, PS will start from black and white anyway). On the darker colors, I also set the layer mode to color. On the lighter colors, I try both color and normal, and take the one that looks the best.

Although I have done some colorizing, I am far from an expert.

[Britsdad]

Well this is my "attempt" at colour, cropped to A4 ratio for print, and yes I decided to go with the original colour to start it off, I'm not good at this stuff can never seem to get the colours looking natural, and I've tried all the tutes for this but it gets a little deep for me .
Anyway this is what I've got (be gentle with me)
John
Edit:---ah well same time posting again and thanks for the info Dave, I'll try that...cheers

[Dave.Cox]

I think that you did a very good job with this. A couple of suggestions that I have heard in the past that helped me: There is a lot of white in the little girl's dress, which suggest a light color. Maybe lighten the color a little so it will look a little less metallic. Getting skin colors can be a challenge. I use Katrina Eisman's method of keeping a palette of blurred skin colors from other photos.

[Kraellin]

very cool, britsdad

and to comment on dave's comment about the metallic look, when i was working on this pic, i noticed a sort of sheen also. i was thinking maybe satin or something smooth and reflective like that. so, i dont think you're far off there, britsdad. i disagree with the color choice, but ok.

the hair looks good as does the woman's dress.

you might think of adding a bit more color shading on the faces and the woman's neck, though. it's just a bit weak now that i see it in color.

still, all in all, a very nice job.

[Britsdad]

Cheers Dave:-- I did start off trying ti get the dress yellow, but in hue sat layer the colourizer always looked too green, so I plumped for purple. Is there a way to get the colours you want with hue sat?
(That sounds stupid to me but I hope you'll understand)
John
Edit:---God! same time again ....Cheers Craig, glad I'm doing something right and I believe the dress would have been satiny.....and I'll have a look at the faces again..

[philbach]

I felt that the faces were too pale. So copied the layer and used multiply blending mode. To that layer I added a layer mask and masked out the lower half of the photo which seemed to have better color and luminosity.

[Kraellin]

i tend to use the worth1000 colorizing tut, and in that you are using different layers with masks to alter the hue/sat. but, you could also just mask out areas and apply your hue/sat to just a given area on one layer.

hehe, dont worry, britsdad, i aint purfact neider

[Britsdad]

Maybe like this:---
I think I like this one.
John

[Dave.Cox]

I think they both look good. Yellow is one of those colors that can be hard to find with hue/saturation, but it's there. I always have to fiddle a bit to find it. It's easier to find if you start with the saturation at 100%. Then look at the sample bar at the bottom.

[Britsdad]

Hi guys....this is the one I'm going to print, Dave I took your advice and added a mutiply layer, but with a gradiant mask added (same difference) Craig it seems to sort out the pale skin on the faces. Here's a screen shot of layers pallet, only background layer not visible, just in case anyone's interested.
Thanks all for the input.
John

[Rock151]

Turned out nice...good job!

[Britsdad]

Thankyou Rocco....it's nice to get inspiration from the guys on here.
John

[Kraellin]

yup, looks good, britsdad