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Help with photo-retouch


Alistair

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[confused]
I can't get this thing looking good. Is there anything that I can do? I know it is a bad-quality photo but I have to get it looking somewhat decent; better than it is now for the most part.

- Al
 

dv8_fx

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uhuh.... color retouch...... not so good at it ;\...... but I'll give it a try, Al.....

In the meantime, try experiment with color adjusting each of the 3 channels of RGB in the channels pallete. That's what I'd usually go for first.

dv8
 

dv8_fx

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Dang it..... I still couldn't save anything inhere. :rofl:.

I had to save the whole page and extract the file from the saved file-folder.

GAUSSIAAAAAANNNNN........... Blinky, stop it now........ :rofl:
 

namvet

Power User
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.... \:/ .... I've seen a way to fix that ... \:/ ... somewhere ... \:/ ... might be in my tute/tips and tricks folder ... will post it if I find it .....
Vee (dv8_fx) ... Mr Blinkey is innocent (actually, there's a rumour he's going to be acknowledged in the new year honours by the Queen of England :) ... ) ..... btw, did you notice that Alistair has a nice shiney new avatar?? ..... [sly] [sly] [sly] .. :rofl: :rofl:
 

dv8_fx

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Do I have a feeling some of the members are changing avatars..... terrorized by avatar freakoes like me :D :rofl:.......

I see possibilities with the new avatars...... %} [sly] 8[......
 

dv8_fx

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Business at hand first...... devastation later.....



errrrr..... I don't know.... what do you think? 8}.... Color replacement was'nt one of my best.

I had to use / play around with the channel Mixer, Colorr Replacement and Selective Color Controls. I concentrated on the yellow tint first to replace it with a brown tint and then replaced a blue tint that appeared most especially in the shadows.

After which I used variation.......

I give myself 5 for this..... maybe even lower.? 8))? :D


dv8


PS...... If your in the pix, where are you?
 

namvet

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dv8_fx said:
Do I have a feeling some of the members are changing avatars..... terrorized by avatar freakoes like me? ?:D :rofl:.......

I see possibilities with the new avatars...... %} [sly] 8[......

:rofl: :rofl: .... I collect avatars like squirrels collect nuts!! .. :rofl: :rofl:
 

Alistair

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dv8_fx said:
Business at hand first...... devastation later.....
errrrr..... I don't know.... what do you think? 8}.... Color replacement was'nt one of my best.

I believe that the color here is better, but one thing that I'm really stuck on is how bad the photo quality is. It's grainy and pixelated and I would like to fix that without resizing it to the point of nondistinctability (what a word [stuned] )

- Al
 

Gaussian

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Pretty messed up photograph. You can take yellow out and maybe slightly do a 'median' blur on the blue channel to get rid of some jpeg artifacts, but that's about it. All the rest is just a lot of work to improve the image just a tiny bit. I would suggest to swallow and move on Al. :\
 

dv8_fx

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Kind of tough to do....... one problem is the brick sidewalk- yellow tint scattered among them. Adjust the levels and you'll see how bad it is.

I had a job like this one.... I replaced the the sidewalk with one specially taken at night . Good thing I knew the area where the photo was taken. And then color tinting work and others. Wellll... the client loved it but it took weeks to do.

It takes time coz I have to do it bit by bit.... if possible pixel by pixel. I'm saying it can be done but takes a whole lot of time , patience and experimenting.
 

Sean

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If you really have the time, I'd recomend what dv8 said.
Here's a quick fix I did using noise reduce filter, shadow & highlights, BC, and selective color.
 

ronmatt

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this is a bit more subtle than patrick's. just opened the 3/4 tones and did some curves in cmyk
 

Raven

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\:/ Well, here's my attempt...if you want the bricks or any other areas smoother you could use the blur brush on them and disolve the jpg artifacts out as much as you want.? Any color you don't want use the desaturation tool/brush over until you like the color.
---Maya
 

Raven

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Thanks! :) What I looked at first was those orange shorts, and also I noticed the yellow banding and extra blue jpging coming through everywhere...although it looked like there might be some bluish light being cast from the alleyway on the right, so I didn't want to get rid of all of it. The yellows also suggested some warmth in the evening lighting from the table side. I went to the hue and saturation mode and tried getting those orange shorts a more real tone with the evening lighting = desaturating the red and yellows a bit. I also changed the cyans to a lighter shade and desaturated some. A couple of times I used mulitply and soft light on the layers varying the opacity just to enhance the depth of the scene. Although it made the photo darker I raised the contrast to help even out the banding (but you could further fine tune that out with a little more time spent). In the areas which I thought needed a bit more deepening of shadows I used the burn tool/brush = I like using the size 300 airbrush reduced to whatever size works on the area. In areas I wanted to lighten I used the dodge tool the same way. I played with the color versions and added a warmer yellow and red tone to the entire pic just slightly. Areas which needed smoothing I used the blur tool/brush. After all adjustments I tried out the auto contrast and auto color corrrect to top it off and got what you see here with a lot of coloring back to a very faded original photo. It could be further enhanced if you wished to spend more time on it. I wouldn't write off this pic. ;)
---Maya
 

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