Help with tutorials

[Doh]

Hi all!

I bought Katrin Eismann's book on restoration and retouching and I'm trying to go through all of the tutorials step by step. I'm relatively new to the more technical methods of restoration. So far this book has shown me a lot.

But,

I have a question regarding ch4_patio.jpg tutorial in chapter 4.


She has us fixing the colour on a photo that had a light leak creating damage in the blue channel. After doing all of the steps she describes, I'm left trying to colour in the gray area of the photo. I can't seem to get the colours right. The colours I choose aren't represented on the layer properly. Dark greens are showing up as light yellowy greens and the browns are showing up too light too.

Is this because there is no blue channel left in this area? How are you supposed to get the right colour?

Any comments would great!

Thanks,
Doh

[DJ Dubovsky]

Hi Doh,

I don't think you are alone in that problem. I had trouble with that chapter lesson too and so did a few others I talked to. So maybe it is possible that Katrin missed something in the steps. Or something wasn't made clear in the instructions.

I'm not putting the book down because even with the few troubles I had not getting the same results as her, I still got a lot of information out of it. I basically just moved on to the next step and vowed to try that method on some photo with similar problems and see if I get any better results.

I had a good time going through that book and now I keep it handy to reference. Good luck.

Hey did you have trouble with bringing the lady out of the shadow too? (the one in the print dress by the ocean) I did it but it wasn't as lightened up as her example. The face in mine was still a bit too dark.

DJ

[Ed_L]

Doh,

I didn't do the one on chapter 4, but there was another one I had trouble with. I tried following the routine a few times without much success, then I realized there was something (can't remember what) that I wasn't doing as described in the book. It might be a good idea to try it again, being *very* careful to follow the steps as outlined.

Debbie,

I did the one you're talking about, but it seemed to work pretty well for me. Of course, my eyes might be shot, I might be too old, or I just might be the wrong sex .

Ed

[Chris W.]

Hi all,

I pulled out my copy of karin's book and tried the ch4_patio.jpg

One thing I did a little different, is that where she has us selecting the blues in the hue/saturation adjustment layer, after totally removing the saturation from the blue channel, I moved over to the master layer and set the saturation to -73 and the lightness to -18...this seemed to work better as far as getting that gray color on the patio. When I went to the re-coloring process later in the tutorial the colors did okay.

Don't know if this helps or not.

[Chris W.]

lol...sorry I just realized I typed karen instead of katrin...must have been thinking of a friend of mine when I was typing.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Ed,
I did get a lighter version and I liked the technique but maybe it was viewing it on a monitor as opposed to viewing it in print that mine seemed darker.

Doh,
I think from listening to everyone, we all had some troubles with following her book but nothing too severe. Don't get discouraged by one problem spot. There's alot more good stuff to go. Actually I found myself doing what Chris did and venture off on some experimentations of my own. I thought that was a good thing too if the book inspired you to try new things. Anyway, if you have any troubles this is certainly the site to post them on. Everyone is great at giving you a word of advice and incouragement. Good luck and let us know how you do through the rest of the book.
DJ

[Doh]

Thanks for the replies!

At least now I know it's not just me. I have found that some of the lessons don't turn out quite the way it does in the book. I've been fiddling with the calibration of my monitor and that has helped some. I think it's going to need a bit more fiddling though.

DJ, the face of the women you mentioned was a little dark for me too. The picture was better, but still not perfect. I get the feeling that they never quite turn out 'perfect' but sometimes pretty close. It amazes me how much difference just a little tweeking makes. (Until now, I've been mostly a sample 'n clone person.)

Chris, I made similar adjustments to the ones you suggested but they didn't work quite right for me. My boyfriend was playing with it last night and found that adjusting the opacity helped too.

Very interesting...

Anyway, onward and upward.

Thanks everyone!
Doh

[DJ Dubovsky]

Doh,
See what I mean? If nothing else it gets you to try to do things on your own and that can't be a bad thing. So maybe not getting the same results is sometimes a benifit because you explore the unknown. Good for you. Glad you are having fun with it.
DJ