Help please

[Enterprise]

Hi,
I'm a new Photoshop user. I really like the program...and want to learn how to use it. I have several books on it...like the restoration book by Katrin Eismann. It however was not able to help me with the photo that I attached with this message.
For this photo I could fix all the dots and cracks in it easy. The hard part comes with the following 2 problems.

1. Fingerprints on woman's face and rest photo.
2. The left part of the photo has been burned out by light shining on it. Half of the woman's face is brighter then it should be..and lost its sharpness. If you compare the eyebrows you will be able to see what I am talking about.

The fingerprint problem I fixed with the median filter but at expence of loss of sharpness.
The face problem and sweater...I could not fix. I tried using the curves adjustment. The idea was to put a color sampler on the bright side of the face and one on the dark side and make the %grayscale which I read from the (navigator)info window to match. I could not get them to match...and I gave up there...

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[chiquitita]

hmmm.. no attachment.... try it again, I am anxious to see the photo!

[Enterprise]

attachment...sorry it would not attach before

atachment

[rondon]

small photo

photo is way small.... and why is it zipped ? I'd go with jpg uncompressed... you can post a photo here up to 100kb..
RonDon

[Enterprise]

web link to bigger immage file size

here is a link to my immage 2.4 megs

http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~vayl/picture/

[Ed_L]

Purdue Lafayette, or Purdue NW? Whichever it is welcome to the site. I think you should reduce the size of the image to 100 KB or less, then post it. Although you'll get a lot of help here, people are not likely to wait for a 2.4 MB image to load, especially if they're on a dialup. Follow Ron's advice and you'll get plenty of help.

Ed

[Enterprise]

126k immage posted on my website...link in this message

Here is the link...
this is my first post here ...so its a little unorthodox..apologize

here are link to the 126k and 2.4 meg files:

http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~vayl/picture/

[Jakaleena]

Welcome to RP, Enterprise

Wow! This is a real toughie, especially for someone new to this kind of thing...

I just wanted you to know I've got your image and am working to see what I can come up with for you...

I'm also going to post it here to make it a little easier to get to for others who may want to help you.

[DannyRaphael]

Hey, Enterprise...

Let me add my welcome, too. You've come to the right place. No doubt Jak will come up with a stellar correction. She's GREAT at this sort of thing.

Here's a fast hack to chew on while she's doing some magic...

One method to consider is to create a replacement eye from the existing "good eye."

Use the Lasso to draw a rough selection around the "good eye" and put it on a separate layer. (CTRL+J). It doesn't have to be perfect... get the eye and a little outside it.

Then select the "new eye" (CTRL+click the layer in the layer palette)... then Edit / Transform (flip horizontal).

Then CTRL+T (freeform transform)... then rotate the eye so it's aligned properly for 'the other side of the face.' Double-click to accept the rotation, then click the Move tool and drag the 'new eye' to the proper place on the face.

Deselect (CTRL+D).

Create a layer mask for the "new eye layer" (click the Layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette). Then paint "black" (using the airbursh tool set at LOW opacity/pressure) onto the layer mask to blend the "new eye" with it's new location.

Repeat the process to do reconstructive surgery (steal some left cheek) to repair the right cheek.

Then take the burn tool and burn a little tone onto the right cheek.

Hope this helps a little... Stay tuned for a much better solution from Ms. Jak!

~DannyR~

[Jakaleena]

Wow again! This was a whole challenge in itself... I hope this will be clear enough to understand. Although it looks pretty straight forward at first glance, it is a REAL hard one to work on. Let me know if you have any questions about any of the things I did.

Here's how I attacked it:

Replaced red channel (see tutorials for how to replace a channel)

Used curves to set white & black points (woman's necklace & darkest part of flowers)

Duplicated the background and added a layer mask to the duplicate. With gradient tool (so that edge was feathered) masked all but the right hand side of the image

Adjusted levels on masked layer to make it a closer match to the rest of the image, and then flattened

At that point I decided I wasn't going to get the color to come back as nicely as I had hoped so I decided that a complete hand color was the best solution.

Desaturated image.

I tried every trick I know to easily eliminate those fingerprints. In the end, I made a new normal layer (not color) and VERY lightly painted over them with colors picked up from the surrounding areas until they were smoothed out. (See the tutorial for smoothing unwanted textures)

Could not get woman's right eye to burn in well, so I copied left eye to right side. I also had to skew the perspective a bit to get it to match up to the left eye the way I wanted.

Cloned and corrected a small section of the woman's sweater pattern. Selected a square of the section with the lasso tool and feathered the edges with quick mask & gaussian blur. Copied the selection and pasted it over the rest of the sweater in little bits - sort of like placing quilt squares. It took something like 10 little pasted sections of sweater to "mosaic" it together.

Hand colored image using select and fill on all areas. I made each selection on a different layer set to color blending mode. I also saved all of my selections in case I might need them again. I used Bruce Beard's skin & hair color charts to pick the skin colors (under Resources on the menu).

Added new background with radial gradient tool using original blue colors found before image was desaturated

Selected couple and copied them to new layer and added drop shadow

Used very thin paintbrush loaded lightly with black to define areas around eyes and mouth.


That's about it. It doesn't sound like much, but it took me about 2-3 hours to do. I wasn't real careful with the selections I made for hand coloring and changing the background so the man's hair went a little smooth, but I hope you get the idea...

[DannyRaphael]

As predicted, a masterpiece, Ms. Wilson. Simply marvelous.

~Danny~

[Jakaleena]

Awwww shucks, Danny....

Yer makin' me blush...



Thank you.

(you know these hopless tasks are what I live for... )

[Flora]

Hi everybody!

Welcome to RP Enterprise !

Jak, already, provided you with the best help you could ask for, but I found that knowing different approaches, has helped me very much in finding my own way....

I worked on the woman only..and here is what I managed to do..

P.S. Sorry I haven't the time for the description right now....but you can PM or e-mail me if you are interested.....sorry again

[chiquitita]

I am afraid I have not worked on it enough to have a final as of yet, but I do have a question - I don't see the fingerprints people are talking about.

What I do see on the picture is alot of moire. I am not sure if this is a malfunction of the scanner or it is possibly because this is an offset print from a magazine rather than a photo... or what. The moire pattern is only in the red and green channels. Blue is fine. I think the best approach I can think of at this moment is to go with the blue channel only - adjust the levels and then hand colorize it.

[Jakaleena]

I think you're right, Chiquitita. After looking closer it does appear to have a sort of "Newton Ring" appearance to it.

But on the original I have here, I can see it clearly on all 3 channels and not just the red and green ones. So whether it's fingerprints, Newton Rings, Moiré or ?, it's still a tuff one to deal with...