More Weekend Photo Restoration

Tackled a bit more of a challenge this afternoon, while watching NFL. This picture did not have names on it, but I am pretty sure it's my grandma, Nellie, and her sister, Darlene. I chose it because of the tears and mold stains. It was a small picture, just a little over 1in, but I scanned it in at 300dpi, and then resized it to a 4.5x6in picture (I was afraid to go larger, as this picture was already pretty grainy.) Fortunately, the photo had a plain background, so to save time, I cropped it out entirely, and replaced it with a canvas photoshop background. There are few details I am not totally happy with, but this was a two hour project... with a little more time, I think I could be really happy with the results. But alas, it's bedtime, and I want to post it! So here it is:

(Before)

and...

(After)



Photo Retouching and Colorization

As I said in my last post, I've been getting re-interested in restoring some old family photos. I've started pretty simple, and am working my way up to a very badly damaged photo of who I believe is my grandmother's cousin. Today, I played around with a lovely photo of my grandmother, Nellie Joyce Tomblin Cummons. I will show you three versions of the picture, 1) my original scan, 2)cropped to 8x10 with black and white levels adjustment and blemishes removed, and 3) a colorized version of the photo.

(original)

(resized, b&w adjustment, blemish removal)

(colorized)

I'm always torn between color and black and white photos. I love black and white, it softens features and gives everything a romantic feel. Sometimes, however, I forget that although pictures were black and white, life very much happened in color! When I started working on this picture, I only noticed Gran's lovely white dress and strappy shoes. It was only when I started to colorize the photo that I realized her dress was not indicitive of the time of year the background suggests. I noticed the bare trees, the empty fields, and the leaves around her feet. So, I created a color pallete of fall colors from this picture on flickr to try and recreate an accurate background. What do you think?

Reach For The Stars!!

I've been recovering from some health issues the past week, and spent lots of time looking through old pictures and such. I found this one of my dad (the one with the hair dryer - thingy on) and my uncle, Steve (the one holding my dad at gunpoint), and it just makes me giggle everytime I see it. It reminds me of something off A Christmas Story ("You'll shoot your eye out!!")

 Anyway, I played around with some simple color adjustments in photoshop. A while back I had gotten pretty good at photo restoration, but like so many other things, I get sidetracked and things get put on the back burner. I hope to work my way back into some tougher projects... I have several photos that need serious work, and maybe someday I'll be able to offer my services to other genealogists.