Making another image

[Wendy]

Hi ...

When my parents married it was during the war and they were only allowed 12 photos ... sadly the camera broke down part way through and although they had a couple of photos take a week or two later they really didn't have a good photo of the two of them.

I took my Mum from Photo 1, the top half of my Dad from Photo 2 and the bottom half from Photo 3 ... :eek:

Then I coloured the photo to come up with No 4 ... :)

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1UOs5zgM4TDWPisBSTQ3wki7zs3t_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1UOs5zgM4TDWPisBSTQ3wki7zs3t)

Wendy

[JulieM]

Wendy: You worked miracles there - the resulting portrait is lovely. I bet that one was really fun to work on...

[Paul_Kingston]

That's great, Wendy. The colouring for example is beautifully done.

One small suggestion: to my eye in the final picture your mother looks a little hunched up, and I think it's because you've taken the line of her waist to carry on down from your father's elbow. But in the original for this bit, the man in army uniform (her father?) has his arm down her side and (I think) slightly obscuring the line of her dress. I wonder if the slight un-naturalness that I think I'm seeing would be removed by altering the line of the dress at this point.

Or maybe I'm just being picky. It's a great result.

[jo]

Outstanding, Wendy! Isn't it amazing what we can do?!?!

[msbrad]

Wonderful Wendy,
I also like that you posted all the photos you used to create.
m

[CalamityJanet]

Wendy, I'm in awe! I've spent hours and hours this week trying to gain some restoration skills. And sadly I haven't got a single finished image yet. And I'm not even trying to do make a new image as you've done so beautifully. I'm going out this morning to but Katrin Eismann's book, as I've heard so many people here recommend it highly.

I have a question. I have a photo of my dad taken in 1936 when he was only fourteen. It's the earliest photo I have of him. It's printed on paper that has a lot of texture and when scanned it looks like it's printed on sandpaper! Very difficult to do any cloning, etc. I tried Matt's tutorial from his book to get rid of the texture but it didn't work very well on this photo. I also tried taking a photo of the photo and at first glance that doesn't look like much of an improvement. Do you have a favorite technique for dealing with textured paper?

[Tina_B]

Great results for a difficult task. You did a great job !
Tina

[lindajay]

Wendy! I'll never cease to be amazed at what you are able to do with a photo. Your restoration skills are so fine!

[Wendy]

Hi Janet ...

Textured paper is the very devil to work on :(

One thing to do is scan it several times ... rotating it a little each time on the scanner bed. Some angle are better than others ... its all to do with how the light hits the image. Another tip is to try photographing it instead of scanning.

Flora over at RetouchPro used to do some amazing stuff on textured paper but she doesn't seem to be around there anylonger but I did find this tut she suggests ... it may give you some help :)

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=58

Wendy

[DebCam]

very nice Wendy. You've created a treasure there.

[jojo99]

Wendy, I'm gob-smacked. The final picture is terrific :)
You must have put a lot of work into it and it looks really wonderful in colour. Congratulations!

Janet, have you tried to take your "photo of a photo" outdoors. This may be standard practice but if I'm ever using that technique I get my best results out in the natural light.
Jo-Jo

[nkeevers]

Wendy, you are definitely my idol!! That is a wonderful picture and love that you posted all the others you took from to creat the perfect end result.

[kayser]

I have to confess, Wendy, that I was disappointed when I saw what "Making a New Image" referred to. I was thinking you were going to show us your latest photorealism project!! Once I got over my disappointment, I, of course, was impressed with what you did with the photo. I think those kinds of projects are very hard. They require a lot of patience (something I lack!)

[sharlmitch]

Wendy,

That is just amazing! Great restoration! :)

Sharon

[kroberts]

Wendy,

Fantastic!:):)

[John L Gray]

Wendy,
You did great work in creating a photo of two special people on a special day.
Your skills in restoration are glowing brightly. Good Job Wendy.

Thanks for sharing.

John

[CalamityJanet]

Wendy, thanks for the link to the tutorial! The texture of his photo is almost identical to mine. I found that it was easier to align the layers when i skipped setting the blend mode to difference. When i set the top layer to darken it was much easier to see when they registered. The texture is still there but much more subtle. I'll try again tomorrow to restore it. If it works out I'll post it in the new B&A forum.

Thanks again for the inspiration and guidance!

[CalamityJanet]

Hi Jo-Jo,

Thanks for the tip! I took some photos of it in front a south-facing window and tomorrow when I'm not so tired I'll see how they compare to the scans. I have an idea for using my monopod to create a set-up for shooting straight down at it. My hand held shots are probably not the sharpest. I'm also going to experiment with shooting it with 35mm film. I checked at Costco today and processing film without getting prints is only $1.39 per roll. I'll then scan the negs and see what the Nikon scanner software will do. I figure it's worth a try!

[Littlefield]

Wow ,that looks great Wendy good color and realistic .You must have good eye hand coordination.
Don

[jojo99]

Hi Janet,
With all the stuff you are going to try you are sure to find something that will give you an image good enough to work with.
I'll look forward to seeing the picture of your father when you're done :)
Jo-Jo

[Tom K]

Wendy;

Brilliant ! One can only imagine how long all that took.

Congratulations...... Tom :D

[Wendy]

Hey ...

Glad that you like it ... the colouring wasn't too hard to do Subscriber Area>Tutorials>Colourizing an image but the rest of it did indeed take a while.

Janet ... glad that the tutorial link helped :)

Wendy

[Orphanannie]

Hi,

Great Job on your parents photo. It's amazing as to what can be done to photo nowadays.

[uniqcrafts]

What a great job and I'm so glad that you posted all 4 of them. It makes it easier to pick out what items you took from each picture.