[wolfie4wvu]

This is the only picture a neighbor has of her mother and she asked if I could help. I have done a few restorations but this one may be the worst because there just isn't very much clean information to pull using the healing brush or clone stamp.

[DCobb]

I started by blowing up the image a little--the final posted copy was reduced back to original size. Then I copied the layer and set to multiply and adjusted the layer opacity until I felt the color looked ok. Painted out the background using a lighter color.

-Clone tool on hair and skin
-Healing brush
-blur tool
-dodge and burn

The lady has on hanging earrings so had to be sure I did not remove those while doing the background.

I believe the necklace she is wearing is rather decorative. However, it could be picture damage--left it alone. Little definition of teeth. Did the best I could. A professional retoucher could do much better. Also, having a picture of this lady that was not damage would be helpful in the restoration of facial features, but since this is the only picture your neighbor had, perhaps she could give advice as the restoration-retouching progresses. Restoration begins with the scan of the photo. Having a larger image would help make the work easier.

dc

[Cameraken]

Hi Rob.

I did my best. Not sure I got the mouth quite right but as DC mentioned the picture is a bit small.

DC. I could not see the hanging earrings. I thought it was just marks. But I could have got that wrong as well.

Ken.

[grannysdc]

I agree with DC.. A much larger picture at a higher resolution would have helped a lot.. I also had mouth problems

Granny

[unimatrix001]

used alien skin blowup to double the size of the photo
duplicated the background layer twice
top layer gaussian blur between 3 and 5 (dont remember exactly)
blending mode to multiply reduced opacity around 40 percent
turned visibility off on top layer
first duplicate layer selected
patch tool to repair background
added layer
clone stamp to repair hair
patch tool on the rest of the image to repair damaged areas
turned on visibility to top layer
merged down
duplicated layer again
gaussian blur same setting as before
set blending mode to multiply
reduced opacity to around 20 percent
came up with this
not the best but better then it was

[Kraellin]

welcome to RetouchPRO, wolfie4wvu.

definitely a tricky one... and i reserve the right to re-do this one

if you wish details, let me know.

[wolfie4wvu]

The picture they gave me is smaller then a wallet so, I scanned it in at 1200 dpi but there just isn't much to work with. I agree it would be nice to have something else to look at but there isn't any. I guess she will have to take whatever I come up with and it will be better then this.

[wolfie4wvu]

Here is what I have come up with so far. Any suggestions from here?

[myfairies]

scanned at 1200 dpi? when I scan at 300 dpi I always get something bigger than the original. The original of this must have been as little as an ant! Seriously, I'm not an expert and there must be something I do not know/understand and I will be happy to learn. In my experience it's impossible to get such a tiny scan. Can you please explain?

[wolfie4wvu]

The original picture they gave me was about 1.5 x 2". Therefore, by scanning in at such a high dpi I was able to make the final print 8 x 10 without much distortion. It isn't going to work with all scans of that size but B&W will work most of the time.

[myfairies]

I still do not understand. you say you were able to stamp it as 8x10, and I agree, because I did the same for a very old tiny b/w photo. But the scan I got and worked on was surely bigger than yours. probably I do not understand the relation between dpi and size, unless you just posted a smaller version of the scan you made

[zganie]

did you scan in color 16bit mode it might help some

zganie

[Alison]

I ran this image through Genuine Fractals to make it bigger. I haven't done any work on it, just thought that it would be better for working on.

[solitear]

Holy smoke...... I didn't know where to begin, either.... I jumped in by enlarging it first...

Ran a levels adjustment, then began rebuilding skin by using the healing brush set to pattern (created the pattern using Film Grain under Filters menu...

Also used Ro's De-Grunge twice...

After about 3 days of that.... hehehe..... I thought I detected teeth so I either brought them out or created them using dodge & burn method...

Lots of S&M.... I mean D&B.......

I copied and pasted tiny portions of lips to the missing parts of her lips ..... and same with hair (I wish I hadn't done that but I was getting tired)..

Created a background.... tinted it a sort of sepia color....

These are fun to work on because you really can't mess them up...

Beth

[Kraellin]

looks great, beth. nicely done