I need help

[mdivad]

here I am with my love and I cant make this pic work out right.... can anyone help me with it??? any ideas?

When I multiply the layer and put it to screen.. and do the same thing about 8 times I can see the faces allright.. but how can I redo the old pic and the colors? HELPPPPPPP

[Blacknight]

Here's a curves/sharpen with emboss quick version - seems to lose detail in the darkened areas a lot when lightened like this. You might look at the channels - I didn't.

[jeaniesa]

mdivad,

You've got a really touch image there!! You might want to consider sending this to dnelson (the owner of this site) for a challenge photo. It is certainly worthy of that status!!

The biggest problem is that there is a ton of noise in the shadow area - so much so that it seems to overpower the facial details. Plus, there appears to be some damage as well. I did not try to fix any of that. I just tried to get it to a point where I could see that. So, here's what I did:

1. Used a levels adjustment to adjust the contrast.
2. Used Katrin Eisman's fill flash technique twice.
3. Levels adjustment layer to set the black & white points as well as the gray point (trying to adjust the color)
4. Used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to reduce the saturation of the extreme blue (as well as red and magenta) hues in the shadow area of the image. (Used a layer mask to remove the effect of the hue/sat adjustment layer on the water and sky.)
5. Used a curves adjustment layer to increase the contrast in the shadow area only (another layer mask to select the shadow area) in an attempt to reduce the effect of the noise.
6. Selected the woman's face and copied to it's own layer. Set blending mode to screen and reduced the opacity to 25%.

What you see is the result of these steps. There is still quite a ways to go as you can see. (That's why I thought it might be a good challenge photo.)

Jeanie

[jeaniesa]

Hmmm - I see my attachment didn't make it. I guess the glitch I encountered caused the problem. Let's try again.

Jeanie

[mdivad]

I need help part 2

I just thought of something.. what if I post a pic of my girlfriend and my face in the same position (or close to it) so we could replace the faces and avoid restoring them?? so we could just focus on the colors and shadows

what do you think? good idea? Im going to look for pics to upload anyway :p

just wait a few hours hehehe

mdivad

[jeaniesa]

Re: I need help part 2

Originally posted by mdivad
I just thought of something.. what if I post a pic of my girlfriend and my face in the same position (or close to it) so we could replace the faces and avoid restoring them?? so we could just focus on the colors and shadows

what do you think? good idea?

Definitely!! Of course, the noise in the shadows is still an issue, but if we can figure out how to make the faces blend in, that would be a big step forward.

Jeanie

[mdivad]

ok.. but it is 3am down here in chile and I really dont want to scan right now hahaha so please wait another 8 hours

I've send the pic to our GURU.. let's see ehat he thinks about the challenge idea :p

mdivad

[jeaniesa]

It's late here too. No hurry!!

Jeanie

[roger_ele]

Hi! Here is my take ...

Duplicate layer(s) in Screen mode and adjust contrast until I liked the background

Duplicate image and to duplicate: Duplicated in screen mode, adjusted color and tone with curves until I liked the people. Select all and drag to image with good background. Added layer mask to even out since you are lighter than your girlfriend.

I stopped here, I don't know if I would go further without playing more with the image, but I think it looks natural and with detail. Clean-up and blending on faces left to do ... I am way curious to see how the swap in new "yous" works.

Roger

[Guest]

I'd suggest that if you have the negative and a scanner that does it to scan the negative instead of a print. From the size you had my guess is that the couple is small so you really can't enlarge it all that much and get good results, but the scan may well be part of the problem.

As it is, there isn't much you can do with the exception of painting in new faces (and many folks here can do just that!) but I gave it a try anyway and concentrated on getting better color and tone, not worrying too much about the noise, since this wasn't going to be a finished product.

1) I made several dupes and set them all to screen mode, then merged them. 2) Used hue/sat mostly to get rid of the purple skin. 3) Median filter layer at low opacity to soften the noise. 4) Brushed most skin areas (medium opacity) with the peachy tones I managed to get on his face, first using brush set to color, then at low opacity with normal setting too. 5) Selected sky/water area and made it blue again with hue/sat colorize. 6) Corrected levels a bit, then 7) did final color correction of skin tones with color balance adjustment.

8) At SOME point above I copied just the green channel and set it to luminosity over the best layer so far, which improved it a lot. But I can't recall where I was in the process when I did that.

Those are the only steps, but I'm not sure about the order. The first step above is the one I always fall back on to lighten/brighten really bad shadows...I have had a lot of luck using screen mode as a starting point for badly underexposed pics and deep shadow areas. For a pic with just part in shadow, select that area of the pic leaving plenty of border of good pic around it, then make it a new layer and set to screen mode. Then use a large fuzzy eraser to blend the edges back into rest of pic.

The pic looks a bit better now but is still pretty much unusable. Since I didn't know what their faces were supposed to look like, there was no point in proceeding further.

Phyllis

[mdivad]

about the faces

Im having trouble woth my scaner so Im going to scan at my best friends house... The faces should be ready in a few hours... I think Im going to take some new ones from myself... well.. its photoshop.. sure you can make me look pretty jejjejej

[mdivad]

sorry all

Im sorry but I hace to travel out of town in about 10 minutes and I have no clue when I come back

I've send the pic to the WebGuru and Im waiting for his ok to post this as a challenge... Ill post the pics of the faces as soon as I come back..

cya all

take care

mdivad

[Guest]

This picture is a tough one. When the picture starts lightning up, grain and strange artifacts start appearing.

I used a few layers, selecting and using levels and curves with a touch of saturation

Right now, this is the best that I can do. I'm not sure as to what else can be done. Have to wait and see what the challenges do.

DW

[phili1]

I agree with Phyliss, pic is very hard. I tried different things one being Color Washer which works well but I only have a demo model. It brings back about 40% of the picture with just a little noise.

I used Extensis to correct cast/contrast/dust/despecle and adjusted levels and curves.

To remove more noise I used NIk media pen tolls despecle and then did the rest with airbrush just a little.

Aalso used smart blur and end unsharp mask.

This is the about best you can get without a repaint job.