Hi Guys,
I am hoping that someone here would be kind enough to provide some guidance in restoring this photo of my girlfriend. It is her Sr. Portrait and my favorite picture of her. It was damaged when her Mother's basement was flooded. I have been able to do some very basic touchups, but I am not very skilled with PS and my success has been limited. I am not having much success in restoring the area on the right and at the bottom of the photo. I would be grateful for any assistance you can provide.
Thanks
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This is about 90 minutes work. You could go on forever, but I have to be out in a while.
Nothing is cropped out. Left arm fixed using sample colour with fully soft brush set to 10% and building up tone. changing colour to give it depth. Texture added to new skin with Camera RAW > Effects > Grain. Definitely make that layer a Smart object because I haad to tweak the grain value several times. Bracelets illustrated, same thing with wedding ring. New hair painted in to help transition to ne
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Used the original to brighten and increase contrast to make it easier to select the area behind her right arm.
Made the selection and used a layer mask to pop a hole through that area.
Copied straw texture from bottom right corner and transformed it behind that hole. Note: never clone into the same layer. Always make a hole and place fill behind that hole. Makes it more flexible and you can move and reshape the fill beneath that hole.
Ctrl click the mask to load as selection, and stroked the se
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Sorry about the flare. I knew it was OTT but like I said, sometimes we can't help ourselves.
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A wee trick withg an image like this is to copy the layer, and use Camera RAW to boost shadows and exposure, plus use Clarity and dehaze, and even Contrast to reveal outlines. It can make it easier to make selections — especially manually with the Pen tool — and those selections will still hold true to the original layer. In this case we can see the area I missed behind her right arm, plus what looks like a grey shaggy rug. I missed that completely.
Unfortunately I lost the layered version I'd worked on by closing a bunch of documents with Ctrl F4 > No don't save because my fingers were moving quicker than my brain, but it would be easy for you to let something into that gap. The original background looked like very dry grass to me, but I thought Straw might look a bit nicer, with a bit of Country & Western feel to it.
Used the original to brighten and increase contrast to make it easier to select the area behind her right arm.
Made the selection and used a layer mask to pop a hole through that area.
Copied straw texture from bottom right corner and transformed it behind that hole. Note: never clone into the same layer. Always make a hole and place fill behind that hole. Makes it more flexible and you can move and reshape the fill beneath that hole.
Ctrl click the mask to load as selection, and stroked the selection using Centre and 20 pixels. Blurred the strok and masked what was not needed to produce shadow underneath the lady.
Copied denim texture from her back and used it to improve area on her upper right chest.
Hue/Sat to desaturate and darken that denim patch.
Used Burn tool to make some creases make it look less flat.
Added diamond to the engagement ring and a flare using Noel's Starfilter Pro 4 (An outstanding plug-in!)
Added copy merged layer to top of the stack and used Liquify because line under her chest was too straight.
Fixed some of the new hair that was just plain wrong. 😞
Sorry about the flare. I knew it was OTT but like I said, sometimes we can't help ourselves.
Sorry about the flare. I knew it was OTT but like I said, sometimes we can't help ourselves.
By @Trevor.Dennis
Trevor, I knew with 100% certainty that the flare would be coming from the time you made your very first post on this thread! 😊 You did an amazing restoration of the photo, btw!
Jane
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