Could anyone please give me some good advice?

[NirvanaBliss]

A friend in USA found a photo of her Dad, hes no longer with us, and she cannot find anymore photos of him, with it coming upto Thanksgiving, i thought i would try and put this photograph back to how it was 12 years ago when the photograph was taken, unfortunately for me, i do the digital paintings, but this art that you all do so well, i am lacking in knowledge.

I shall add the original and then also my attempt, could someone please tell me where i am going wrong, or what i need to do to at least give her a decent attempt?

I once use to chat on this site, probably when the site first opened up, and my name on here then was HelenS, you might know me from other photo art forums, hope someone can please help, i'd really like to get back into this artwork. Its been a long time now since i even attempted a photograph restoration.

Many thanks if you do take the time out to help me, if you just look and then ignore, Happy Thanksgiving to you xx

I thought there might be a program to do this now? or is it still old school? Thanks for checking in, and if you do help, or add me some advice, again much appreciated xx

Please do not add this photo in any online porfolios, the reason being as this man is now not with us and the family would not want it uploading to anyones artwork sites, thank you! xx

[NirvanaBliss]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

49 views and not 1 person could offer any advice, now come on you aren't normally this shy?

[sergio2263]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

49 views and not 1 person could offer any advice, now come on you aren't normally this shy?

Photoshop would do a good job restoring this photo. I am confuse because you said artwork is the photo for restoration or artwork there's a different between the two. Also whilst you are waiting for someone to help with restoring perhaps you can have another go yourself at restoring the photo.

[NirvanaBliss]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

Hi Sergio,

I have added my tried attempt, i was hoping someone could look at it, and tell me where i am going wrong, as i don't seem to be grasping the bottom half of the picture? And i generally do digital paintings, not restoration, so i was adding that retouchpro from the old days was for restoring photos, maybe its different now, i did join this site in 2006, although a different id.

Thanks, x

[sergio2263]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

I've had a quick go at your photo, i've re-colourized and done slight restored.

[NirvanaBliss]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

Thank you Sergio,

I like how you did his jumper/sweater and oh thank you for sorting the childs skin out, whatever i did, did not look human.

Very clever with the colorizing.

Helen x

[sergio2263]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

Thank you Sergio,

I like how you did his jumper/sweater and oh thank you for sorting the childs skin out, whatever i did, did not look human.

Very clever with the colorizing.

Helen x

You're welcome and thanks for your nice comment there are plenty brilliant tutorials in this very forums for photo restorations I've used one of them for the baby's face.

my name is Helen also lol sergio is my cat's name.


Helen x

[NirvanaBliss]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

Many thanks Helen, what a brilliant name you have also! xx

[Craig Walters]

Re: Could anyone please give me some good advice?

hi nirvanabliss,

from looking at your original posting, i'd say the only thing lacking was that you havent finished yet. that's all. your progress shows some real talent. i'm guessing you're painting with an airbrush or something similar. nothing wrong with that. i do it often. and, if i'm right, try this technique:

1. make a new blank raster layer above your other areas.

2. use your airbrush set to a light opacity to make changes (on the new raster layer)

3. check the blend modes, especially 'color' to see if that doesnt make it even better.

4. do this for a particular area, like one person's face and stop painting on that raster level.

5. make a new blank raster level and paint into a new area. this allows you to make changes to individual parts of the image without wrecking others.

6. rinse and repeat.

7. at some point you may find you have quite a few finished raster layers and things are getting a bit clumsy. use 'copy merge' and then 'paste as new layer' and this will put all of your previous work into a new layer over the rest of the layers. make a duplicate of that and keep going with any other changes needed.

#7 also helps if you've got a lot of color blend layers going and you dont want to affect the other color blends by having yet another one above that one.

for your particular image, i see at least 5 layers i'd be painting into, with each on its own layer, the man's head, the background, the baby's head, the man's shirt, and the baby's pajama.