Patrick's Challenge

[Trick]

This'll be truncated in lieu of later posts...

OK, now I would initially like to hear everyone's opinions on how they would restore this. After hearing someone's formula, I will send the TXT file that includes the steps that I wrote that were edited by a few folks at Adobe, and again by some of the people at the California Historical Preservation Society.

Yes, I know this sounds really terrible tht I'm giving you another puzzle...but if I just gave you the answer, you simply would have mechanical instruction s to finish this photo only, not any photo that you work on. As a hint, I'll let everyone know tht the features used are as follows: Levels, Gradient Map, History Brush, Clone Stamp, History Palette, Layers Palette, Gaussian Blur, Dust & Scratches, Despeckle, Median, and High Pass...none of the Filters were applied without use of the Fade feature, and none of the Brushed were used in Normal and 100% opacity at the same time ever.

Major trouble areas in order of difficulty: Blotchy stain on shoulder, bigh chunk missing on top (partially covers hair), face lacks details due to grain being overpowering.

There it is, I look forward to seeng people's responses to this...

[Doug Nelson]

Patrick:

Please repost the attachments. They don't seem to have been included.

[Trick]

Part 1 of 2

Tom, you make an excellent point, and I sincerely apologize for what's been going on.

In an effort to make up for this, I think it may be best to follow through with the basic idea of this thread, which is the exchange of knowledge...so I'm posting a lesson that's been about two years in the making. I need to make it two parts so that everyone can download the initial image and the finished image with the tutorial text file.

The first attempt to post this met with limited file sizes being allowed in a post, which is why this is now broken into two parts.

The image posted here is just a photo that I borrowed from my neighbor...aside from that, I have absolutely no idea who she is. Still, it's a photo that requires some rather severe restoration - but not so severe as to make it really difficult, so it makes for a good tutorial. Besides, the photo belongs to my neighbor who has given permission for it to be used in this manner, so we don't have to worry about copyrights or any of that garbage.

The instructions that follow are for Photoshop, and will work with versions 5, 5.5, and 6. When you open the image, it's a pretty smart idea to assign a working profile of Adobe RGB 1998 to it as this is the RGB space that is really best suited to be later converted to CMYK for printing. A good habit to develop. If you have any other questions regarding color space management (and I'm sure most of you do...it's a bit on the confusing side), emailing me is quite welcome.

Part 2 of this post will have another attachment, including the tutorial instructions and the finished piece.

[Trick]

Part 2 of 2

This is the second part of the tutorial exercise for those of you interested in beefing up your Photo-Retouching skills...it'shere simply so I can post the ZIP file that contains the finished image and the instructions.

WinZIP and Stuffit both should have no problems expanding this file.

[Trick]

Incidentally...

If in the process of working on this tutorial, you come across the part where I mention my sharpening techniquie being posted on this site...well, as of yet, it doesn't seem to be.

If necessary, I'll re-write it in TXT form and post it here, but it's a tad involved, includes multiple layers, and uses a filter most people haven't even heard of, High Pass.

(Well, at least I hadn't heard of it until I read about it in the Photoshop Bible.)

[Doug Nelson]

The tutorial Patrick is referring is here.

[Trick]

Just one look...

Take a quick gander at that one and you'l realize very quickly why I didn't want to re-write that. I tend to write a little too much sometimes, bu enough is enough...

[Sam]

I've approached this much like a normal restoration challenge and attach my attempt. Method:-

Applied auto levels (lazy, I know)

Patched up the damaged area above the girl's head using copy, feather, paste (lots of small patches). Tidied up the whole background wall in the same way. Touched up small details with the clone tool.

With the stain on the jacket, I found that this looked best on the blue channel, so copied that section, pasted and tidied up with the eraser. This had to be colorized to match the rest of the photo. A duplicate of this layer was then made, to which I applied Gaussian blur, faded, then blended on "normal". These two steps almost got rid of the stain altogether, but they still needed a little bit of fine tuning with the airbrush & clone tool.

Shadow area to the left and below the desk was treated with color burn tool on a duplicate layer. This tool was also lightly used on the girl's eyes, mouth and hair. Layer opacity reduced.

Copied the girl to a new layer.

Made two copies of this new layer. One I applied Gaussian blur to, the other High pass, which was merged to the blurred layer on overlay mode. This layer now had a 'halo' round it, which had to be removed with the eraser. Also erased eyes and mouth to bring out their sharpness again. Slightly upped the contrast on this layer.

Put a 1 px Gaussian blur over the background. Merged.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Hey Sam
Excellent job. You took on the challenge and met it head on. Good for you. She turned out very great.
DJ

[Trick]

Wow.

Well, that beats the instructions I gave, that's for certain.

Normally, I do go into the bit with the channels to remove the stain, I left it out for a couple reasons...number one, I wanted to keep the instructions basic, number two, I forgot. Good call.

And aside from using Auto-Levels (shudder), the only thing I have to add on this one is to maybe suggest reading my tutorial on avoiding auras...but that's only a suggestion.

Again, I'll say that Photoshop's inherent beauty is that there are usually several different ways to get similar results...honestly, I think Sam's finished work came out better than my instructions would deliver. Do you think you might perchance write up a small piece on why the extra layers were used?

One of my big things is that if you know how to do something, you can always do that one thing...if you know why to do it, you can apply it anywhere.

Great job though!

[Sam]

Thanks DJ!

Patrick - I did read your tutorial, thanks. Re layers - I'd rather use too many layers than too few and often find that small changes made to many layers is better than large changes to fewer layers, if you know what I mean. Just a personal preference.

Thanks for your kind comments. I enjoyed the challenge.

Sam

[Trick]

Preaching to the choir

OK, I can see your point there. I too believe it's better to have too much than not enough.

Matter of fact, since PS6 took out the 24 layer cap, I've often found myself working on images in excess of 100 layers (remember, effects are layers, too). My poor iMac reallywasn't made for this...but it's putting along nonetheless...

I'd actually like to see a piece that you've accomplished, Sam. Something you found challenging and had to invent a solution to complete if you happen to have any available.

By the way, you sound certified...are you? I know that the certifications are nothing more than really pretty toilet paper, but I was still happy to get mine.

[Sam]

The other point I had forgotten to make was that, until very recently, I was trapped in PS4, i.e. no history palette, so not used to that luxury yet!

I've done quite a few of the restoration challenges and also have a few jobs I've done commercially on my website.

Where I come from, being certified means you're a confirmed loony.

Sam

[Mig]

I enjoyed this challenge Patrick. I really enjoy hearing how people go about doing things. I think you mentioned recipe in one of your messages and it's really true how people have their funny recipes of coming up with something to fix a picture. I can't remember everything I did to this one, but I know I went about my usual routine. I started by fixing all the big gashes and junk, by using the clone tool and also selecting large chunks of fairly healthy areas and pasting them into place over rotten areas. After that initial part was done with, I copied the layer a couple times in case I screwed up what was to come and I probably did a levels adjustment at this point as well.
I then selected the background and put in some texture to sort of coalesce with the noisy background that was already there.
Then I went about fixing her face and her shirt primarily. There was a lot of very strange noise on this picture that I had a lot of difficulty getting rid of. There were bright greenish speckles of dust. This may sound odd, but I selected around her skin and then used smart blur, which works well with skin, but you have to play with it. After this step I went around the face and used the blur tool to fix the areas that become blotchy from the smart blur. I lowered the opacity of this layer, added a layer mask, painted away part of this layer to show the facial detail below, applied the layer mask and merged down one layer, then copied the merged layer.
I then did some work on the clothes, trying to bring out some detail. I did this mostly with painting and the dodge and burn tools.
I finished off by painting on her face, adding some skin here and there to get rid of some splitchiness, and also adding some eyelashes and a touch of eye liner.
I was pretty much finished at this point, but I wanted to add some depth to it because it looked a little flat so I added a duotone copy of the file on top of the background layer, changed the mode to soft light and reduced the opacity of this layer. This sounds like it might be similar to Patrick's idea for the gradient map, but I'm not really familiar with that.
I then added a touch of noise and did a final levels adjustment.
Other than the colour, the only thing I'm not real happy with is when I look back at the original I think I changed her looks a little too much or it's a little overdone.
I've played with the history brush before and it's got great potential, but I haven't really mastered it so I tend to stay away from it, although I hope to learn more about it as time goes on.
That ended up as a long description

mig

[DJ Dubovsky]

Mig
You did a great job with this challenge. The contrast looks real good and you really brought out the details. All in all, an excellent restoration.
DJ