Crazy Lady

[Britsdad]

Hiya all,
I have a beauty for you to try and help me with Does anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of all the crazing on this photo? All the channels look very similar (all bad) Is there any way, or is it clone, patch, heal ect?
John

[jaxx]

If you produce a very high resolution scan to pick up the cracking detail even more, then here is a method I have been using that works great for small cracks and crazing. I'm not great at it yet, but I learned it from Ctein's book.

1) Duplicate background layer and apply USM to sharpen the cracks even more
2) Run a find edges filter
3) Apply a gaussian blur around 1-2 pixels to fill in the Find Edges a little bit
4) Add black/white adjustment layer to turn into black and white
5) Add curves adjustment and push black slider about half to three quarters way to push the cracks edges to solid black
6) Next save image to Alpha channel and invert - making the cracks white and the background black

Now you should have a nice mask to apply a median filter to to fill in the crazing and cracks

Again I'm learning this technique and am still practicing, but I posted a quick 5 minute try at the image just using this masking/median technique.

[mistermonday]

If you are successful in creating a Crack Mask, you can ctrl+Click it to load it. Then get rid of the marching ants with Ctrl+H. Now you can use the clone tool or paint brush to go over the whole image. Since only the cracks are selected the rest of the image is protected from cloning or painting. This means you can work more quickly and be less precise in your use of the tools.
Regards, Murray

[beefy24]

Had a little try at this ...a lot more to do though

[Britsdad]

Thanks all,
Jaxx, nice one your method removed a lot of the smaller cracks (saved a lot of work!) Well I've had enough of this one now here it is, and yes I know it could be worked on some more but, enough is enough.
John

[jaxx]

Great work Britsdad, nice and clean

[unimatrix001]

Not perfect and i am not good with the healing brush and clone tools so i did this photo entirely with the patch tool to repair the cracks.

[jaxx]

wow, how long did that take with the patch tool?

[Britsdad]

jaxx, thanks a bunch took ages with your method and cloning, god knows long Unimatrix's took with just patch tool! good job sir (or madam!).
Anyway thanks all again........John

By the way Jaxx, when you said "add a black/white adjustment layer" did you mean just desaturate? because thats what I did

[unimatrix001]

thank you jaxx and Britsdad. it took around a total of 6 hours. the hardest part was the cracks on the face and clothes. i did use noise removal and then added back in some grain from the original photo.

[jaxx]

Originally Posted by Britsdad

jaxx, thanks a bunch

By the way Jaxx, when you said "add a black/white adjustment layer" did you mean just desaturate? because thats what I did

Either way it doesn't matter. The end result just needs to be black and white in order to make it a mask.

[Britsdad]

Cheers pal,
all help is greatfully received.
John

[unimatrix001]

just thought i would make her stand out alittle from the background.

[Kraellin]

interesting choices, there, unimatrix. why the red hair and not light brown or some other choice?

[LloydM]

Originally Posted by unimatrix001

just thought i would make her stand out alittle from the background.

Nice work..! I was thinking along those same lines but am still working o getting all the cracks and crazing out

Originally Posted by Kraellin

interesting choices, there, unimatrix. why the red hair and not light brown or some other choice?

Why not red hair..? Looks good to me...

[Kraellin]

hey, i wasnt complaining, just curious. in fact, i was thinking once, of making a study of black and whites to see if one could tell from the shade what the real hair color truly was (or eyes or anything else, for that matter). i suspect, from what studies i've done on this, that her original hair color was a medium to light brown, but quite possibly had a bit of red in it, also.

[unimatrix001]

in fact i was trying to get a brown or light brown. didnt notice it was more red then brown until it was mentioned here. was late and my eyes dont work that well anymore.. lol

[Kraellin]

hehe, well, it looks good regardless

[Britsdad]

Nice one Uni, love it
Just in case anyone's interested here's the other one of the pair for you to play with, along with my finished version.
John