This photo was recently discovered by my mother, tucked inside an antique silver photo frame behind another photo. It was shot in 1915 and the infant is my grandmother. I am in the process of restoring it to fill a 4x6 print.
In my opinion the original was in great shape, aside from the the fact that someone did a scissor job on it. I chose to recreate the background, as the original looked poor and the existing drapes were difficult to clone (I wish to give credit for the curtains to RetouchPRO's tutorial, "Doug's technique for creating curtains" submitted by Leah.).
To extract the people, I hand-painted a mask, then gave the mask a gentle gaussian blur to remove it's sharpness. I had to copy-and-paste Father's left leg to repair his right leg. I then threw in some black at the bottom of the image, rather than attempt to create ankles and feet from scratch. For the backdrop I followed the "curtains" tutorial, but used my own texture. To finish, I removed all color and added sepia with a photo filter adjustment layer. I multiplied Baby's face for more detail, painting it in where needed.
I didn't mean for this to come off sounding like some sort of cheap tutorial. I'd like your opinions of my procedure, and what you'd recommend. Is this bright enough? Does the backdrop fit? Is there enough sepia, or should I add extra color with doutone? Does Baby's face need more contrast? Thanks.
Ken
In my opinion the original was in great shape, aside from the the fact that someone did a scissor job on it. I chose to recreate the background, as the original looked poor and the existing drapes were difficult to clone (I wish to give credit for the curtains to RetouchPRO's tutorial, "Doug's technique for creating curtains" submitted by Leah.).
To extract the people, I hand-painted a mask, then gave the mask a gentle gaussian blur to remove it's sharpness. I had to copy-and-paste Father's left leg to repair his right leg. I then threw in some black at the bottom of the image, rather than attempt to create ankles and feet from scratch. For the backdrop I followed the "curtains" tutorial, but used my own texture. To finish, I removed all color and added sepia with a photo filter adjustment layer. I multiplied Baby's face for more detail, painting it in where needed.
I didn't mean for this to come off sounding like some sort of cheap tutorial. I'd like your opinions of my procedure, and what you'd recommend. Is this bright enough? Does the backdrop fit? Is there enough sepia, or should I add extra color with doutone? Does Baby's face need more contrast? Thanks.
Ken
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