In what order?

[Londonjohn]

Hi all,

Im gonna be a pain and ask another question!

When you start a restoration is there a special order in which you carry out the work? ie. crop first, adjust contrast/lighting, sharpen, levels etc and then start repairing the cracks and tears.
Also, if you are working on an old sepia/brown photo is it best to desaturate first?

Thanks

Jon

[Flora]

Hi John,

There are no rules about it, I usually start by cropping/straightening the image when needed (can't really work with a crooked image ) , then I go for tone and contrast, colour, cleaning up (clone, patch, etc.), enhancing/emphasizing, and, finally, sharpening.

[Ed_L]

A pain? No way! After learning the hard way, the first thing I do is what I consider the most important. The very first thing I do is save the original scan, and make it a read-only file. That protects it from being worked on, then saved. It is then available at a future date if you decide you've learned how to do the work a little better, or for any other reason you need to start over. Then I make a duplicate to work on. If I'm sure of the cropping I'll use, I usually do the cropping next. That eliminates part of the file size, making things go a little easier. Next comes tonal adjustments, followed by removing blemishes, cracks, noise, etc. I normally do all sharpening before saving the image, but you'll find quite a few people who like to sharpen in different stages. When finished, I save this with a new file name. This is only *my* preference. Others will surely vary.

Ed

[Flora]

OOOOOOOOOOpppppssss.....

Thank you so much for bringing it out, Ed .... my only 'golden' rule when working with Photoshop .... the one rule I didn't even remember to mention .... never, ever work on the original!!!!!

[Leah]

Generally - crop/straighten, sort out levels/curves/exposure and contrast, then if it's a sepia/stained b&w convert it to monochrome (but NOT through desaturating or Mode -> Grayscale -- you'll get much more control if you check out the individual layers and then use Channel Mixer (either as an adjustment or as an adjustment layer) appropriately), then do cloning/patching/removing dust and scratches/etc.

As Ed and Flora said, never work on the original. And so far as possible keep your changes on adjustment layers or new layers for as long as you can (certainly until you are absolutely, totally 100% certain that you want to irrevocably commit to that particular change)

[FrannyMae]

LondonJohn...I am so glad you asked this question! I have been wondering the same thing myself! I have been using much the same strategy as Ed, Flora, and Leah mention above, which also follows along with what Katrin Eismann recommends in her book "Photoshop Restoration & Retouching."

I usually crop later, but probably because I don't have the experienced eye to know what composition I want until later in the process. One notable exception to this is cropping away edges that are darker or lighter that the picture so they are not taken into consideration when you use levels or curves.

As I gain more experience I learn not only about the technical aspects of using Photoshop, but also the logical and procecural as well! Thanks for a great question...I look forward to seeing what all the "gurus" around here say!

[Londonjohn]

Thank you all for the advice it is appreciated.
I like the bit about saving the file to read only, believe it or not Ive only just started saving the original. Ive also just found out not to save as a jpg, something to do with the file getting compressed too much each time you save.
Im also now looking at the way Im converting to mono (Thanks Leah)
Im off to practice now!

Regards
Jon