# Finished project.



## Daniel Tiger (May 21, 2009)

Well here it is almost 6 hours, 3 last night and 2 plus today. The hard part with people is eyes, although the gingham material of the seat cushion was a pain in what one sits on. 

Dan

scan 2 is last nights' work and 3 is today


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

Very excellent work there Daniel, I can't see a single blemish left ray:


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

Very well executed Daniel - you are well on the way to becoming skilled in restoration.


I hope that you don't mind, I would like to make a couple of suggestions. Now that you have removed the blemishes, step back and look at the photograph as a whole and think on how it could be improved further.

I feel that the contrast could be boosted a little and a crop to emphasize the subject of the photo and a slight rotation it correct the camera tilt.

I note that you are using Photoshop Elements 5. You should be able to achieve similar results as below

Cropping and straightening:









Looking at the distribution of the histogram. You will notice that the darkest point in the photo is not black.









Now look at where the pointers are. The one at the left is setting the black point and the one in the middle adjusts the mid-ranges. In this image, there is no need to adjust the white point.









In the final image, I have selectively sharpened the eyes, nose and lips very slightly. I don't think you can do selective sharpening in PS Elements.:









Now that you can see that there are some more advanced improvements that can be achieved, I suggest that you try them for yourself.

Looking at the histogram as above is via the 'Level' tool (Ctrl-L) in Photoshop - not sure if it is the same in Elements.

One final thing, I note that you are saving at a quality level of 6. This can introduce 'jpg artifacts' - I suggest that level 8 would be better. If you have reasonable hard drive space, a quality level of 12 would not be excessive.


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## Daniel Tiger (May 21, 2009)

Thank you very much for the pointers, Don, when I can sit and play around a bit I'll look into cropping and straightening. Would C&Sing been better to do before the restoration? It seems that I would have less area to work on making my job easier when restoring. I'll look at the histogram and the sharpening tools to see what is available.

A little history on the picture; in my wife's family one of the men was into photography, loaded his own film, developed, and printed, on many of the prints it looks like he under exposed the film because there is little or nothing left of the negatives leading me to believe he over developed and did not fix and wash them long enough but used them before they faded away. Guess Sandy's lucky that the photos are more than serviceable for restoration. That picture was taken outside by the front porch of the Homestead. Many pictures of historical value were lost when her Great-grand Mother died when my wife was 9 or so, pictures of US 30 when it was muddy ruts, and the Indian encampments that set up twice a year in the 1890's as they moved from summer quarters to winter ones and back. The old men with there Garfield beards and top hats a real shame no thinking on people's parts in the 1960's when she died. 

Spent a few hours taking exterior and interior pics of a B-17 and a B-24 this morning talk about tight spaces could barely squeeze thru and there I am doing it with a camera and a bag. I haven't load them yet, has to wait for Saturday when I have time. 

Thank you also WereBo I need all the encouragement I can get.

Dan


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

Hi Dan

Personally, I do the cropping before most processes unless I am doing a reduction, down sizing an image. In that case, I do all the restorations at full size, including a tiny amount of sharpening. By doing the restorations at full size, they are easier to see and do but also any blemishes that can't be removed are minimized and often disappear when reduced in size.

I usually leave the sharpening process right to the last before saving.

While talking about saving... I mentioned earlier about the 'quality level' of saving and about you using 6 & I suggested using 8 when saving as a .jpg. It is important to realize that a .jpg is a 'lossy' process that compresses the image data so that the file size is smaller.

Every time you open a .jpg you are opening a compressed file that has already lost some of its data. When you save that file again as a .jpg, you loose more of its data. When you open it again and save it again even more data is lost....etc etc.

The data losses create what are known as .jpg artifacts around edges in an image. Once data is lost, it cannot be recovered - Its gone for ever!!!!

Example of jpeg artifacts:










So, If you are working on a photograph, I suggest you follow these rules: Deviate from them at your own peril (& I talk from experience - been there & done that!)

1) Copy the image you are going to work on.
2) Work on the copy, never work on the original. The original must be kept in its original state so that in the event of making a mess of the copy, you can always start over again by making another copy from the original. (If possible keep a copy of all originals and working copies on a separate hard drive/cd/dvd etc - I have lost many photos by having a hard drive fail!)
3) If, when you are working on an image, you don't have time to complete the job, you must save the working file in a lossless format. A format that does not compress the image data. If possible use the proprietary file format of your software. PSD for Photoshop PSP for Paintshop Pro or what ever it is called today. Then when you open the file to continue to work on it, it should be exactly as it was before you saved it. Another good reason for using the proprietary format for work in progress (WIP) is that if you are working with layers, the PSD will save the layer structure for you...

Only when you have completely finished working on a photo should you save it as a .jpg with only a small amount of compression.

Finally because it is so important to understand the different formats that are lossy or lossless, I suggest that you Google 'lossless formats for photographs' and have a read at some of the articles.

...and a final, finally, when you scan in photographs try and use a dpi of 300 or greater and if possible save that scanned image in a lossless format (PSD or TIF*)

And last of all - If you digital camera stores the image on the card as a .JPG, it is already compressed and lost some of its potential data.

*tif can be lossy or lossless, so read up on it....
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I am really looking forward to seeing your aviation photos of the B-17 & B24 - as you can guess, aviation is a passion of mine :grin:


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## BoilingTitan (Aug 30, 2010)

Great job! Also thank you DonaldG I learned a lot from your post that I had forgotten. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.


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