[jllinko]

This is my first try at photo editing, so for my first project I thought I would try to restore an old photo of my grandparents. In my very amature ways, I scanned this photo at 600DPI, desaturated, clone/smear the flaws, noise filter, selected areas to color with hue/sat. Not real happy with his face or with her faded skirt. And what should I do with the rest of the background, leave it as is ? Any suggestions, where to I go from here, remember I am a brand newbie.

The original
http://linkous.homeip.net/family/gpgmoriginal.jpg

My version
http://linkous.homeip.net/family/gpgm4.jpg

I really appreciate any input, Link

[crazyfly1]

Hi jllinko, welcome!
Nice job evening the exposure and fixing the spots and blemishes.

My biggest piece of advice would be about the coloring. I'm not sure how you did it but it appears that you made a selection with the pen tool and then added color to the selection?
I would try this. Make a new layer, change the blend mode to color, grab the paintbrush set to about 30% opacity and with the softest brush, start painting. I think you'll find you get better results and it saves you messing with the dreaded pen tool.

The other thing I would mention is that if you are going for realistic, I wouldn't think that the womans top was red (red will normally desaturate to the darkest of grey) and I wouldn't guess the gentlemans suit at that deep blue.

All in all, an outstanding first attempt and again, welcome.

[jllinko]

Crazyfly1,

You are right about the suit. My grandparents are form Tazewell Virginia. I have a version that has him in a brown suit, but the blue looks a little more sophisticated, if you know what I mean. And you are right about the red hair piece. I'll try something else.

I did use the lasso for selection, saving each selection, then image/adjustments/hue-saturation. I will try the air brush, but how do you get crisp edges using it with out a selection?

I truly appreciate your input.

Link

[Sweetlight]

Very good job indeed, especially if you are a newbie.
Tazwell huh?

I am from Daytona but both sides of my family are from Princeton WV but spent a lot of time in Tazwell around the Amanada area as my grandfather was a coal miner. Welcome to the site.

c

[crazyfly1]

Hi again Jllinko,
In answer to your question...exactly. Sorry I'm being funny. You don't really want a hard selection for color. If you zoom way in on any picture and look at a color transition between two colors, say red and green, you will find that red doesn't stop and green start but that there is a sort of gradient transition between the colors. You'll find this even between say red and white, that red becomes pinkish and then white.

I know of 3 ways that trainers teach to colorize; one is the one you used and it can work, I would just feather your selections quite a bit. The second is kind of complicated and involves coloring each of the channels and I don't think it gives any better result then the one I used and I think you have more control this way.

I took about 45 minutes with this to show you what i mean. I didn't spend any time at all cleaning because as I said you did great there.

I desaturated and made a new layer,
tuned to color blend mode,
named layer blouse,
zoomed to 400%,
picked color and with a brush size of 15 and 100% opacity I traced in the blouse and then colored it in.
When I was done I dropped the layer opacity to taste and started on the face. For the face I used several colors and a brush opacity around 15 to build shades. Same on the background (it needs some brown for the twigs too but I didn't do it). When your done with the face you may find that a guassian blur on that layer of maybe 2 helps. Same with background only I used 4.
If you go too far out of the lines just use a soft eraser tool.
When your done with a layer, turn all the other layers off and look at it and make sure you colored it all in. You'll see what I mean.
When your done you will have a face layer, a skirt layer maybe an eye layer(I darkened the pupils and put in catch lights) and all of these can change color, opacity, or shades of light and dark whenever you want them to.
You can also go back and try hue sat on each layer to taste and even different blend modes.
I did a retouch not to long ago and found that vivid light made a mans tie nice and shiny. Anyway I'm rambling, Hope this helps you.

[jllinko]

CrazyFly1,

Your version of the picture is fantastic. Color of the skin is really great.

And thank you very much for color blend tip. That is very cool and will use it instead of lasso, but I'm having a problem with colors, not matching the color I select. I am trying to make his suit a darker blue gray, but when I paint on the new layer, set to blend color, it comes out a fluorescent blue. It seems like the darker I go, the more of a color mismatch. Any help is greatly appreciated.



Link

[crazyfly1]

Try letting it be blue, then when you have it painted go to hue saturation (with just that layer selected) and change it to what you want. You might try a levels command on it too.

[jllinko]

Crazyfly1,

If I go ahead and paint it the fluorescent blue (even tho a darker blue is selected) then try the hue/sat for the selected layer, when I try to adjust the lightness, it gets lighter whether I slide the bar to the keft or right. If I slide the sat to the left, it get lighter, to the right it gets more fluoresent. So I cant get the color I want using that. Not sure how to use levels, but I will research. I am truely a newbie.

Again, lighter colors seem to work ok, but darker colors dont.

However, if I change the blend on the layer to soft light, I get more what I want. So I hope that works out.

The other thing that got me for a good part of the day was, if the paint brush blend is not set to normal or the same as the layer blend, the color will darken as you paint if you release the left mouse button then paint over an area already painted.

I have a few knots from pounding my head on the table, but I am learning.

Thanks for your help,

Link

[hawkeye60]

I prefer to use a solid color adjustment layer (set to color blend of course), over painting on a new layer for each color. It allows for changing or adjusting colors later without repainting.

[jllinko]

Crazyfly1,

How do you get feathered edges using you method. My edges are too crisp and shows every bump I make when tracing/painting onto new layer.

Hawkeye60,

Being a newbie, could you give a little more direction for me, I'm willing to research, but I need a little more to go on.

Thanks, Link

[hawkeye60]

Make a solid color adjustment layer by clicking the icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Pick a color close to what you want, at this point it doesn't have to be perfect. Click OK. Now you will only see the solid color (the mask is white), with that layer selected hit Ctrl I, this will reverse the mask to black and you will see the original image again. Change the blending mode of the layer to color and reduce the opacity to about 60%.

Now take a white brush and paint some of the area. If the color isn't right, double click the color layer and the palette will open. As you change the color you will see the change in your image on the area you painted with white.

Paint with white to reveal color and black to remove color.

[crazyfly1]

What Hawkeye60 said there will work great. I just color in with my brush o a new layer instead of creating a new layer filled with color, masking the color out and painting it back in. important thing is color blend mode on your layer. To get rid of the sharp edges when you have your brush tool selected, go to the brush tool bar and in the "brush" drop menue with the number by it take the hardness down to 5. That will make the edge of your brush soft.

[jllinko]

Thanks Crazyfly1 and Hawkeye60, I really appreciate your help.

Link

[jllinko]

I have come to the end of my capabilities.
I need an artist/photoshop pro to continue.
A side by side can be seen at

http://linkous.homeip.net/family/index.html

If anyone is interested in helping me improve this, the psd file can be downloaded via ftp at linkous.homeip.net with a userid of retouch and password of retouch. It contains the desaturated and flaw fixed picture and all the area selections for each colored section.

I'm happy with what I did, being my first shot at editing photos, let alone restoring a photo, but I'm sure it could be taken to the next level.

Thanks to everyone running this site, great resource.

Link

[jllinko]

Could someone recommend a company to restore this picture?

Link