UNCLE! I Give Up!

[Kit]

Hello everyone, Altho many of your names are known to me, as I've been hanging around for a long time, this is my first post. I'm an ol' time neg retoucher who went digital in 2001 & this site was my 1st & most valuable reasource on many levels, so I do contribute $ as I'm able. I finally had to take the time to learn how to post & upload images as I've spent so much time on this family image for my sister. I want to keep the final in color & that makes for a nightmare of getting rid of the yellow/brown areas in the image, esp on the skin. I fear I'm down to healing & cloning as my only options. Understand that I'm not nearly done with this image, just wanted to get it up to show how far I've gotten with the "stain". I can't even remember what all techniques I used to get out as much as I have, but there has got to be a better way, right?!? So now after taking the time to read this long post, if anyone has a few more minutes for a suggestion, or to let me know that it is just cloning, cloning, cloning, I would be forever grateful! I'll even make another contribution to RTP! Please don't take the time to do the full restoration, as it's just that dark area I can't figure out. Many Thanks Kit

[weewood]

I've lighten the image to see the dark areas that you are referring to. Most of what I see can be corrected with the patch tool, if you are familiar with that. It will still take some cloning to get the photo exact, but you have done well so far. Don't give up, some restorations take days, but they are well worth it in the end. Regards, David

[Sweetlight]

Just a quick attempt

[GerryB]

Very nice Sweetlight.

[TommyO]

In general terms, you may want to put up the clone stamp tool. Any tools such as the clone stamp or patch tool will simply degrade the detail more. You have all the necessary detail, you simply need to correct the color in some small areas. There are many techniques for moving forward. So, you may have to read a few and decide which will work best for your time constraints. You can refer to articles on colorizing black & white photos, or refer to articles on glamour retouching and apply their techiniques to just the areas in question. (You have so much of the original color in place, I would never revert to b&w and try to recolor.) Either should get you close.

[Kraellin]

hi KIt and welcome to RetouchPRO.

i used your 'sofar' image and added some more touchups which might help. this is not a finished work, just some little bits to show some examples of what might be done.

on the larger boy's hands, i used mostly airbrush and varied the colors and shading as seemed fit. in one early stage i guassian blurred the layer just for some general toning and then airbrushed more over that. you can also set your eraser brush to a very low opacity, like 3 to 5 or so, and erase bits that you dont like and simply carry on from there.

on that same boy's pants, i used clone and that's all, both legs where stained. the point there is to keep the texture/pattern intact.

next, i did the carpet/flooring. again, clone only.

now the tricky part, the rest of the skin. on all the rest of the skin, i made one new blank layer and set the blend mode to color. i then picked appropriate colors for the airbrush and very lightly (2 to 3%) airbrushed the skin areas. again, use the eraser when necessary. go over this varying your colors and application till it suits.

however, one addendum to the skin airbrushing. i'd do a bit more prepping on the faces, especially the boy's faces. they are somewhat 'dirty' yet and could be cleaned up more for a better result and then do the airbrush on a color blend mode layer. i didnt. i just wanted to show you some techniques here.

after that i then picked the larger boy's shirt color, the darker color and again airbrushed in color mode over those stains. then, i did each stipe in that shirt with the appropriate color the same way.

you also had some scratches yet by the larger boy's shoe. i cloned those out and a dot in the upper right part of the image.

that was basically it.

the nice thing about airbrushing in color mode is that if used in combo with a light eraser you can get pretty close to good skin tones without losing texture or smudging with clones and smudge type tools.

i also purposely left some areas undone, like the area near the larger boy's wrist and fixing the darkness of the boy's faces.

you've done a good job so far. now ya just need to finish

[Kit]

WoW, you guys really ARE the Best. I thank you all so much for your imput & think you have me pumped up to get back at this one (right after I make my donation to RTP. Big thank you to Kraellin also for your wonderful detailed instructions, which I will try to duplicate, although the airbush is a tool I've neglected to use, as my traditional airbushing was not going well. Guess it's time to start practicing again!

[chillin]

Originally Posted by Kit

...if anyone has a few more minutes for a suggestion, or to let me know that it is just cloning, cloning, cloning, I would be forever grateful! I'll even make another contribution to RetouchPRO! Please don't take the time to do the full restoration, as it's just that dark area I can't figure out. Many Thanks Kit

I don't think it's just cloning. I've focused separately on four areas:the knees, left arm, chest & the hands. It took mostly some masking & curves adjustments.
Here you can see the layers. If you need more info, I could go over some details.

[Kit]

Whoa chillin Your layers palette is a bit overwhelming, but your results are well worth it! Can't believe you got so much out with only the tools that you used. I can see that I need to go further & work on smaller areas, for shorter time periods (to keep my frustration down lol). I may take you up on your offer of providing more detailed instruction as I get back to it. Thank you very much. I hope you didn't spend as much time as it looks like, or I may need to make yet ANOTHER donation to RTP

[Kraellin]

Originally Posted by Kit

Big thank you to Kraellin also for your wonderful detailed instructions, which I will try to duplicate...

you're welcome

[sdubose99]

I agree with Kaellin's method although I'd go a little simpler. My technique is to create a good grayscale base, then colorize it using the original version with some modifications. I started with Kit's "so far" image which was almost there. You did all the hard parts!

Grayscale base: I checked each color channel to see which channels to use as a good starting point to colorize. Green and red looked good. Duplicate each, and copy and paste each to create a separate layer. Red looks like good tonality with the exception of the younger boy's legs and right arm which are blown out. The green channel looks better in that area so I pasted the green channel copy over the red channel and masked all except to reveal the boy's leg area and arm. Now red and green copy layers blend nicely with good tonal quality throughout. You may have to dodge and burn the arms and hands to even everything out. That makes our luminescence layer... now let's add back some color.

Take the original image, paste it on top of the red and green copy layers, set it to color mode. We see the problem areas are skin, little boy's shirt, and middle boy's shirt. And maybe some face color needs correction, even in the girl. With the new color layer selected, I used the eyedropper to select a skin tone I liked, painted with the brush over all the skin. That gets the skin where we need it. Choose the cheek blush color from the original, use the brush to softly paint the rosy cheeks back.

Use the same technique to pick colors to paint in the clothes, then paint on the color layer as needed.

Good luck!
Scott

[Kraellin]

looks good, scott

[GrahamP]

That is fantastic, Scott. It's a showcase of what can be done in restoration.

[Kit]

Looks wonderful Scott! And I have to admit, although I've made progress (thanks to all RP members), I'm still struggling with areas that you cleaned up so well--thank you very much. I've used the airbush to try to recolor damaged areas, on a color mode layer, & some looked fine, but some not. Esp when I tried to whiten areas on smaller boy (clothes, ball), I can't get a white, just a dirty gray like color that's worse then what I started with. I believe that may be a different problem altogether, but for now I'm going to get back at it using your techniques. Many thanks for your contribution!! Kit

[jcasey170]

This is my take on this one. I've added a little bit of texture into the backdrop, and softened the edged where the light would be filtering through hair etc. I've kept the features on the kids quite sharp though. I added just a touch of drop shadow to try and pull it all together. Also brightened the whole thing a lil.

[Kraellin]

looks nice, jcasey170 and welcome to RP

[lurch]

An observation - I think this photo has been colorized, 'cause little boys don't normally have their cheeks rouged. Be that as it may, here's a quick and easy cleanup executed in Photoshop CS3. Some cloning will be needed eventually, but I've done none. Process is as follows:

1. Add a black and white adjustment layer.
2. Lighten red, yellow, and green until the brown stains mostly disappear.
3. Set the blending mode of the adjustment layer to luminosity.

These steps will make the stains the same luminosity as the surrounding areas, but they'll still show.

4. Add a new blank layer with blending mode set to color.
5. Sample from nearby areas with a brush set to color and paint the stains out on the new layer.

There will be places where you won't be able to get the luminosity just right, and the stains will show as dark or light splotches. Gotta clone (or equivalent) to fix those.

Now when I got the luminosity layer adjusted to get rid of most of the staining, it blew out some of the skin highlights and they turned a funny hue when I painted on the color layer. To fix that I took the image into Lab and painted over the funny color, in color mode, with a color sampled nearby. Did some patching in the background, then went back into rgb. Final touches, just to make myself happy, were a luminosity layer containing the merged green channel to add some more shape to the faces and a curves adjustment layer to bump up contrast just a little.

This technique doesn't work on all stains; they have to have a definable color like the brown here. When it does work, however, it really saves a lot of cloning.

[Kit]

Wow! Still getting help on this one, I LOVE you guys! This is a great technique that can save alot of work--I'm saving this one too. Thanks so much from myself & all the others it will help!

[Hedley]

looking good so far

[pdcollins6092]

How about this?