Before & After #247

This game is to help those of us who are trying to learn new tricks when it comes to editing.

Here's the breakdown of the game. I will post a picture that I choose, resized to exactly 1024 pixels maximum on the long side. Outside of being resized it has to be unedited...meaning no adjustments to any levels, it has to look like it did as it came out of the camera.

The game will last 72hrs and whoever can produce the best edited image (as judged by me) will be picked and it'll be their turn to post their unedited picture for all of us to take a crack at.

The participants must have their "Image Editing OK" turned on and they must provide at least a simple breakdown of how they edited the image, some entrants are a little vague on this point, please give us all details so we can learn and share tips. For instance if you use the unsharp mask tool or Smart Sharpen, provide us with the adjustments you used so others can try them out.

You can post multiple images, but the first image you post will be the one that is judged - all other images will be considered for knowledge and tip use only.

Also, please keep all comments, be they positive or negative, to yourself until after the game has ended.

If you happen to be the winner of the game please start the next one with the title of the game and the following number. For example…the next game should read "Before & After #248".
This is all about having fun so have at it!!
This round ends Thursday, Jan 7th at 9:00pm EST

> Here is an image that's special for one of the people pictured in it.
> It's their only image they have of their childhood. The original is
> about a wallet sized print.

I know it's bad cricket to sully the thread with comments, but I have to ask - will the people in this photograph see the results of our edits?

Kendoway wrote in post #9325988
> Here is an image that's special for one of the people pictured in it.
> It's their only image they have of their childhood. The original is
> about a wallet sized print.

I know it's bad cricket to sully the thread with comments, but I have to ask - will the people in this photograph see the results of our edits?

yes

I am brand new and haven't come close to knowing how to do photoshop.. but I do love doing this!! simple but here is mine. Thanks, Lisa

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Palladium - this was an exceptionally difficult photo to work with. If you are serious about recovering this, I would suggest several re-scans until you've got something better as the base (provided the original doesn't look exactly like it does above). I have no idea how close the scan is to the original.

It's horrifically blown out (and grainy as well), but I did the best I could with it. I'm not pleased with my results at all.

Anyhow...

CS3
Basic crop to remove much of the "negative space".
Curves, levels, Noise Ninja - then USM at .05

Lightroom 2
Convert to grayscale
Exposure, clarity.
Paint brush with exposure + erase in some areas.
Vignette + sharpness.
Increased blacks slightly.

There's so much more work to really recover this photo, it should be left up the hands of an expert. Quite a challenge.

I'll second that Kendoway, this one was tough, but fun to try anyhow. I'd love to see what a pro could do with this though.

In ACR: -.2 exposure, +70 recovery, +35 blacks, +28 contrast, +50 clarity
An image of the PS layers is below.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

LR2 - WB, Tone, Recovery, Blacks, Contrast, Clarity, Vibrance, Curves, Sharpening, NR
CS2 - clone, USM, dodge, burn, blur tool, -Exposure, Shadow/Highlight, Border

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Well Done everyone - one of the people in the photo works with my wife and like I said before, the original print is a wallet sized print and that is her only image from her childhood.

Our winner of #247 is "Ocron"

I especially like that you added some "dress texture" in your workup.

I also did a few workups - here is one

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

Nice work Ocron!

Looking forward to 248.

Well Done Sean , the dress texture definitely adds to it.

I did 4 layers of sharpening, some slight coloring, and some blending modes.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

Thanks guys. I PM'ed Tracey (Bittersweet) to see if she wanted to do 248 since I owed her one from 246. If I don't hear back from her I'll put one up later.