Critique Please

[maverick911]

I would appreciate some feedback as to whether I should expect to be able to take this example any further?

I scanned in at 300ppi. Using CS3, Adjusted RGB Levels and merged them to give me a purer B&W. Increased brightness. Sharpened using Unsharp Mask and used the Clone and Spot Healing Brush. I tried the Dust & Scratches Filter but it removes too much detail. Finally ran through Neat Image.

[jeremy1986]

excellent job. You really brought detail and life back into the picture

[Kraellin]

it's a good job. you missed some specs, however. look at the man's right shoulder and his hair. also, there are some darkness problems, like with the woman on the left (as we view it). a little dodge there would help. the little girl on the left is tricky. she apparently moved during the shot and those old cameras often had fairly long exposure times, so she's a bit blurred. dont worry about that too much, though; bringing her back to being blurred is still bringing the image back to what it looked like.

i brightened it up a bit, too. and i used 'fade correction' to bring it back to life a bit. i dodged some of the darker areas and smudged and cloned out many specks and lines. i used a hue/sat layer to bring it back to full black and white.

oh, before i did a thing, i enlarged by 3 times to be able to work on the detail a bit easier. your image here, as posted, is a bit small. hopefully, you have something larger to work on.

[maverick911]

Many thanks for your work on this Craig. I have never used 'fade correction'. I will also check out 'smudge'. I think that the white spots on the grooms hair and shoulder maybe confetti?.

I thought I was uploading at max. This was 97kb - I will have to read up on that.

Many thanks again Craig - most informative.

Mark

[maverick911]

Craig, can I ask you how you enlarged the image. Was it just image>image size and simply increase the dimensions?

[Kraellin]

maverick, you're welcome.

i enlarge using paint shop pro's 'resize' tool. in your case i enlarged by percentage rather than by pixel count. i used 300%.

i said smudge because most folks know what that is, but i actually used the 'push' tool in paint shop pro, which i'm told is like a very heavy smudge in photoshop.

the max is 100k, but the file size is not necessarily an indicator of image size. you can have a large image size at a small resolution that would fit within the 100k limit or a small image at a high resolution which would also fit. and, it could be the same image just sized and resolved differently. i think in photoshop the guys tell me you use 'save for web' and there's a way there that allows you to save things as you want.

[maverick911]

Many thanks Craig

[maverick911]

I want to colorize this image, and would like to lighten up the background with maybe a marbled or cloudy effect. What would be the best way to achieve this?

[Kraellin]

there's lots of ways to colorize. i'd suggest you do a search of this forum and look for Vikki's stuff. she's about the best here.

[maverick911]

Many thanks Craig - Vikkis Stuff is amazing!

[Kraellin]

yup, vikki is great. i believe the tutorial she uses is this one: http://www.worth1000.com/tutorials/1...ary-colorizing but, look around on that site. they have some very good tutorials and more than one on colorizing.

[maverick911]

Thank again Craig, a bit of a shame that the last image has been deleted on that tutorial. Vikkis work is extraordinary. Do you think you could persuade her to do a webinar sometime?

Mark

[designer74]

Hello again,

Thought I'd play with your image. I did a partial colorize. Your thoughts?

[designer74]

larger size as per Craig and desaturated color as per great suggestions.

[maverick911]

Hi Tom, thats amazing! I would be interested to know how you achived the curtain effect. I think the colors are a little bright for the period, but nonetheless an interesting one.

Mark

[Kraellin]

turn the saturation down, designer. maverick is right... too bright for the period.

[jesterjeni]

I adjusted the luminosity and clarified it a little

[designer74]

Originally Posted by maverick911

Hi Tom, thats amazing! I would be interested to know how you achived the curtain effect. I think the colors are a little bright for the period, but nonetheless an interesting one.

Mark

curtain effect was just replacing the background with curtain. nothing fancy.