Restoration Critique

[down2earth2]

I got this restoration challange from the site RetouchPro (http://www.retouchpro.com) which someone here at PA recommended. I can't remember who, but thanks for the tip. It was titled 20 Hours; I spent way more than 20 hours on this I'm sure.

So what do you see that could make this better? Maybe more like a photo and less like a Photoshop creation.

[Dave]

I've no idea how you get from A) to B) that's magic to me. So what I offer in critique is just what I see and no comment on your talents ....

Her hair looks too solid.
The bottom edge of her skirt looks about 3 inches thick.
The clouds need softening / de-focussing.
The building and wall top need some texture and a bit of ageing/damage, they look like they're made of lego (too good).

Magic :)

[down2earth2]

Just thought I'd add some of particulars of what I did to restore this photo. Hard to even remember what all I did now that it’s over. Lots and lots of cloning looking for small patches of undamaged pixels to use.

I copied and flipped the left eye of the baby to use for the right eye, and the left side of the baby's nose to use for the right side. I used the smudge tool with the strength at around 5% to push pixels around on the faces a bit. I added a front shoe to the man using the woman’s left shoe and used the transform tool to resize it. On most of the shadows I used a mask and a gradient to fade them with distance. To give the sidewalk a realistic texture I took a picture of a concrete walkway which I blurred and reduced the contrast. The particular clouds in the sky didn’t seem important so I replaced the whole sky from a photo then added noise and a gausian blur to match the photo better. I did a levels adjustment using the eyedroppers, and finally used the dodge and burn tool to accentuate the shadows and highlights.

[Dave]

now he's uttering magical incantations ..... :)

[down2earth2]

[QUOTE=Dave]Her hair looks too solid.[/QUOTE]
I tried to find some hair from a photo that I could used, and even tried pasting one in but it seem too different in character from the original to use. Other than that I couldn't figure out anything to give the hair some life.


[QUOTE=Dave]The bottom edge of her skirt looks about 3 inches thick.[/QUOTE]
Your right! I didn't see that at all.


[QUOTE=Dave]The building and wall top need some texture and a bit of ageing/damage, they look like they're made of lego (too good).[/QUOTE]
I realized that, but didn't have any ideas on how to inflict some realistic aging. I guess I need to take a bunch of photos of concrete walls.

[Dave]

One other thing .... their shadows seem to be stronger than that of the wall.

You know that guy rminds me of someone I once knew ..... it can't be him, his wife was blonde! LOL

[libra]

[QUOTE=down2earth2]I got this restoration challange from the site RetouchPro (http://www.retouchpro.com) which someone here at PA recommended. I can't remember who, but thanks for the tip. It was titled 20 Hours; I spent way more than 20 hours on this I'm sure.

So what do you see that could make this better? Maybe more like a photo and less like a Photoshop creation.[/QUOTE]

Challenge??? It needs a miracle down2earth2! I'm impressed, I am too impatient to fiddle in that much detail (blush)

[Silky]

I'm impressed! Great job!

[burndog]

I'm pretty impressed as well D2E2, images like these are pretty much hit and miss, when there is so little to work from. Ultimately they will end up looking almost illustrated. Only thing I can recommend is to concentrate on the people and vignette the the corners. This way the less important parts will not look as drawn. People generally are interested in the subjects unless the background has sentimental value.

Hope you don't mind that I downloaded your restoration and altered it, I figured it was the easiest way to show you what I mean. The vignette is easy, just make an eliptical selection, create a new top layer, feather the selection (here for the low res image 25 px) invert the selection and fill with white. With the selection still active you can try filling a second time, it will actually give a bit more density. You can also change the opacity of the layer for less of an effect.

All in all I find the restored version a bit dark, and the shadow on the upper left side of gents face could be lightened as it looks like hair. All in all I say you have done a great job, and I can believe that it took hours and hours.

[down2earth2]

[QUOTE=burndog] Only thing I can recommend is to concentrate on the people and vignette the the corners. This way the less important parts will not look as drawn. People generally are interested in the subjects unless the background has sentimental value.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your comments, Burndog. I agree. I was tempted to crop in close and a vignette is even better. In real life restoration, it's the people that matter. Since this was a posted restoration challange, I wanted to try to restore the whole thing.

I did find a way to make the walls look more realistic. I took a photo of a cement wall and used the photo (with adjustments) insted of my photoshop creation for the wall on the right. I'm on the lookout for a smoother wall to use for the walls on the left.

I'm starting to think that to do restorations you need a library of photos of objects and people you can use to fill in damaged areas. No way I can draw photo-realism.