[One4UAll]

First, how do I get my title to be boldface? It seems I can only boldface in the message box.

Second, the photo, below, is a detail from a larger image of an interesting door, but when I took the photo, my leg got into the picture, along with some other things. There are two doors, one in front of the other. The door with the red guard is a storm door with window & screen. That's in front of the inner wooden door.

I've tried to use the Polygonal Tool to Select an area, then drag that Selection over the area I want to replace. I use the Polygonal to better line up the screen lines with each other. What I wind up with is a series of overlapping patches of varying densities. Then, I face blending these patches at the borders to make a smoother transition.

I don't want to Clone because I want to preserve integrity in the screen's lines. Also, the Healing Brush doesn't help in blending, nor does Gradient.

I want to make the wooden door a solid color with only the pattern of the screen in front of it. What would you do in my situation?

[Alison]

Have you got a larger image ?

[One4UAll]

Alison,

Thanks for responding. Do you want the total image, rather than the detail? I don't post on flickr or pBase, etc., so if you want a higher res image, I don't have one. I decided to bite the bullet & use the Clone tool & it's working out pretty well, altho consuming hours of time. I'll post an image of what I've done so far, tomorrow, as it's late, here.

[DCobb]

Is this what you are trying to do?

dc

[One4UAll]

DCobb, You took out everything but the reflection on the left, which is what I'm trying to get rid of. I want to keep everything but the reflection.

I'm going to provide the total original image, the detail at higher res, & what I've done to the detail, so far. It'll take a while. Thanks.

[grannysdc]

Originally Posted by One4UAll

What would you do in my situation?

Paint, clone, patch on seperate layers adjust layer styles and opacities and maybe lay a pattern or screen texture in a masked overlay later

Below is a quickie of what I would do..

[mistermonday]

One4UALL, Granny has the right recipe. The Patch tool will take cae of most of the problem if you patch small sections at a time (not the whole reflection area). You can recolor the door by painting on a blank layer set to color blend mode or use the Color Replacement tool, or other techniques. The quality of this image is quite low - with high degree of pixelation, distortion, and color noise.
Regards, Murray

[One4UAll]

Granny, your advice is good. I'm not going to ignore what you say, & I'll learn from your experience. Alison asked for some better images. I'll give both of you what I started with & what I've done.

I didn't think this door was much more than a remembrance, but the more I removed unwanted details, the more I realized it could be a good picture, not only for the former owners of the farmhouse, who had built it & lived in it for decades, but for others who enjoy good photographic art with a nostalgic touch.

As you can see in the examples, I had to solve the problem of the contrast between the bright area in upper left and the shadow in the rest of the original image. I think I did that ok by Selecting, with the Polygonal tool, feathered at 5 px, the bright area, reversing the selection, and bringing up the dark area to match the bright area with Curves. I Cloned out the inevitable border. I Cloned a lot of things. I decided to bring the shadow area to match the bright area, rather than the reverse, because I thought it would be better to darken the image, later, if necessary. It was a tossup.

This image has sucked me in. It has so many issues, but if I can overcome them, I'll spend additional hours to the ones I've already spent in getting it to what I want. I work on the Background layer. I can always Go Back, etc. When I'm satisfied with what I've got, I Save. Any harm in that? Layers, channels, etc., complicate things for me. I can be corrected.

Anyway, here are the images I promised.

[One4UAll]

There are still some issues left, as you can see. I guess I'm committed to following thru with additional hours. The thing for me is preserving, as much as possible, what is in the original image.

'Monday, your response came after I started this message. Thanks. That the image has the quality problems you describe (which I don't see) may be due to the upload, rather than what I see on my screen. I think it's as good a quality than can be rendered from a 100K image. BTW, what's with the green?

[Sweetlight]

One4uall,

Hi,
Just one quick question before I tell you how I did my variation on the theme. Was this shot originally taken on film, maybe like a YashicaMat or something?

Okay, I am terrible at this part but hang with me and I'll try to jot it down here.

1 - Created duplicate layer of original, change the mode of that layer to screen on the layers palette and dropped the opacity to 85%. Flattened.

2 - Duplicated the layer again, grabbed some color from the shadow area and pained it over the highlight in top left. I love the highlight but there was not enough latitude to hold a true black and it blew out that highlight. I added a bit of noise (1.5.) Dropped the opacity to 70%, erased away the rest of the layer and flattened again.

3 - I grabbed some color from the nice brass handle on the door and layed it on what I think is a doorbell because that highlight was way blown out. Added 1.5 noise, tweaked with curves to remove a bit of red, redrew the button and highlight. Flattened again.

4. I made selection of the window and took out allot of the cyan, being that it is shadow a bit is acceptable and the rest of the shadow did not go blue at all. Cut and pasted the blind to cover highlights.

5.) Clone tool for getting rid of the highlights in the bottom of the door. I know this was not your original crop but I like all the lines so just an idea. I left the highlight and reflection of what appears to be a geranium plant, as I liked the way the red fell in line with the iron bars. I added a bit of noise to the whole image just to kinda seal it all together, bumped the saturation about 4 points and using curves found my black point at the base of the door handle.

That's it, sorry about the wordiness.

Chris

[DCobb]

Wanted to try this again after misreading the original post and attempting to retouch everything except what was to be retouched. Think this is a little better, but not perfect.

dc

[grannysdc]

Just a thought.. You might try a HDR tonemapped version of your photo if there are more harsh shadows and highlights.

This was tonemapped at the default settings using Photomatix.
Plus Cloning and healing and adding back shadows on separate layers

[jadams007]

try a polarizing filter when you shoot

[One4UAll]

Granny, 'Monday, DCobb, Sweetlight & jadams:

Granny & DCobb, you hit the nail on the head with what I'm after & 'Monday, thanks for emphasizing the Patch tool, which I discovered is on my PSCS. BTW, how much time did it take you people to improve that photo? I'm beginning to think it may be better to turn these kinds of problems over to a professional retoucher, rather than spending so much time, myself.

Is there a "National Retouchers Association" that certifies professional retouchers, or do I just go to someone who hangs out a shingle & work with them? I can't burn up the time I have spent on this photo when I have hundreds more to do. IOW, I'm realizing my limitations. OTOH, it may be too expensive to hire a retoucher. I have a dilemma.

Sweetlight, I used a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex (film) camera. The photo was taken 30 years, ago. The 6x6 cm. transparency was scanned on my Epson Perfection 4870 scanner about 18 monhs ago. I think I scanned it @ 3200 ppi/dpi, producing a 176 MB file. It's ok to be "wordy," when you need a lot of words to explain something & you explained what you did very well.

I'm not that sold on your result. You achieved your vision, which is ok. It shows me the possibilities others see in my images. The enlarged view is too large. I'd like to see your result larger than the thumbnail, but not so large to require scrolling the image, if you want to go to the trouble. I'd like to back off a little.

jadams, Yep. You got that right. Next time I do something like this, I'll use a polarizer. Preparation at the shoot avoids a host of sins. Wish I'd known that, then.

I'm going to work on this image to the bitter end with only what I know, yet knowing I could have done this inside an hour. Well, it's been said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." Thanks to all.

[Sweetlight]

14ME,

If you right click and save the photo to your desktop and open it in PhotoShop - under the View drop down click fit on screen and you will see all of the image at once.

I was pretty sure that the reflection of you in the door appeared that you were holding the camera and waist level and looking down into that sweet, sweet, frosted glass viewing screen. I miss that a lot sometimes. Thats when I set up my Sinar 8x10, sneak under my dark cloth, lay my loupe on that lovely upside down image and remember.
Good work.
cf