Photo Restoration in Photoshop CS5

April 12, 2012 / posted in Lightroom, Photoshop / No Comments

photo-restore Click on the image to see a larger size.

This is a fairly simple restoration project, especially when using Photoshop CS5 with content aware fill tools. The first step in restoring a photo like this, is to get a good image of it for a starting point. This particular image presented some challenges here because it came out of a frame where the glass was convex and the image was painted on cardboard that took on the shape of the glass. What this meant was scanning the image was out of the question as this would further damage the image when attempting to get it to lay flat. So the option left is to take a picture of the image, which is what I did.

If you look at the “Before” image, you can see the pins I used to hold the image to a white board so I could take a picture. For the picture, I used f/8 at 1/320 sec with flash from two SB-700 speed-lights (one on each side of the camera at 45 degree angles to the image) bounced in 24 inch umbrellas to provide nice even light. Once I had the image, I imported it into Lightroom and made some minor adjustments in blacks, whites, contrast, vibrance, clarity, and saturation so the color was a good match to the original. Then I opened the adjusted image in Photoshop CS5 so I could use the content aware fill tools to repair the damage on the faces and clothes. I used the spot healing brush set for content aware fill and set the brush size just slightly larger than the damaged area (did one at a time) and painted over the damage. Photoshop then magically filled in and repaired the damage. I did this for every damaged area except around the border, and the spot on his eye.

To repair his eye, I selected and copied a portion of the other eye and pasted it into place over the damaged area. Then used the clone stamp tool to blend the edges of the patch. I also used the clone stamp tool to reconstruct her nose as the content aware spot healing tool didn’t repair this as well as I had hoped.

After the other repairs were complete, I used the clone stamp tool to repair the damage around the edges of the photo, sampling (often) close to the damage areas so I could maintain color and textures. Then saved the image and returned to Lightroom for final adjustment of applying sharpening to the image. The end result is what you see in the “After” image.

Restoring old photos is not as hard as some imagine, and it can be a lot of fun. So before you toss the old damaged photos, you might want to consider restoring them!

Photoshop CS6 Beta released to public

March 22, 2012 / posted in Photoshop / No Comments

Adobe has released Photoshop CS6 Beta to the public. Here’s your chance to try out some really cool new features in CS6. I really like some of the new “filters” they’ve added, like the iris blur. There’s also a new selection tool available in the color range selection called skin tones, works really well! The crop tool has been completely redone and it will blow you away!

Check out all the new stuff in CS6! You can download the beta HERE.

First Car Show of the Year

March 20, 2012 / posted in Thoughts / No Comments

Ready to Ride The first car show of the year occurred this last Friday at Fatso’s Diner here in Loveland. Even though it was a car show, there were motorcycles at the show too! This image is of a very cool chopper.

Again, this is one of those images that I didn’t bother to look through the view finder to frame the shot. I find it odd that many of the shots I take when looking through the view finder and trying to frame the shot just right, don’t work for me once I get the image on the computer! On the other hand, those I take when I just point the camera without looking through the view finder do work more often than not once I have the image on the computer – go figure. I guess what this is trying to tell me is that I should trust my instincts a little more and just go with it!

Sweet Deal on Lightroom

February 29, 2012 / posted in Announcements, Lightroom / No Comments

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that Amazon has Lightroom version 3 (the full version) at 70% off today. That is a sweet deal for Leap Day! It makes the price $89.99 which is the same as the education discount except you don’t have to prove your a student or teacher. If you haven’t got a copy of Lightroom and you’ve been waiting for a good price, you don’t need to wait any more…check it out at Amazon

For those who would be asking about Lightroom 4 and should I buy Lightroom 3 this close to a release date for Lightroom 4? Well, historically, upgrades for Lightroom have been priced at $99, and the full version price is $299. If this holds true, which there is no indication that it wouldn’t, then by taking advantage of this deal on Amazon and then upgrading when Lightroom 4 is released, you will have saved about $100. Is it worth it? I would say so!

Lightroom 4 Develop Module

February 4, 2012 / posted in Lightroom, Reviews / No Comments

Job Fair Portrait As promised, this post is a more in depth look at the changes up-coming in Lightroom version 4. The Beta has been out for about a month giving a lot of folks plenty of time to test and put it through it’s paces. Since this is a Beta version, there are likely to be some problems. Watching the forum, the major complaint right now is speed. It seems that this Beta version is very sluggish – surprise! What you have to remember is this a Beta software, meaning there is still a good portion of debug code in the software which will – you guessed it – slow it down!

Anyway, what I wanted to address in this post was changes specific to the develop module. Now the develop module is nothing new, but the new “Process 2012″ portion of the develop module causes some rather significant changes in the user interface of the develop module. Notably the sliders are all zeroed in the center and have a range from -100 to +100. This can take some time to get used to because for example, in LR3 the blacks slider ranged from 0 to 100 and increasing this slider would increase the amount of black clipping. In LR4, to increase the amount of black clipping you will move the slider to the left (to a negative number), to reduce the black clipping you will move the slider to the right (to a positive number). Small movements make a big difference as the sliders are sensitive. Another change in the adjustments is the Fill Light slider is gone, replaced by the Shadows slider which does a much better job of opening up the shadows in your images.

lr4adjustbrush Another notable change is that for the adjustment brush and gradient tools (adjustment brush sliders shown here), all of the basic development module sliders are available with the addition of a few other sliders, including the noise sliders. What does this mean, well for starters it means that you can use the adjustment brush to change the white balance of only the portion of the image where the brush is applied. Additionally, you can apply area specific noise adjustments. For example, if you use the adjustment brush to open up the shadows in a specific portion of your image and find an increase in the noise in this same area, you can now adjust the noise along with the shadows adjustment to balance things out.

Need to warm up just a small portion of your image, now you can using the adjustment brush and the Temp and Tint sliders. Want to adjust the really dark areas of your image, apply an adjustment brush and use the shadows slider in combination with the other sliders to fine tune the look you want. The possibilities are endless.

The image at the beginning of this post was processed entirely in Lightroom 4 Beta 1. This new version of Lightroom gives a lot more control of specific parts of an image to the photographer, and is a welcome enhancement.

Lightroom 4 Beta 1 First Look

January 10, 2012 / posted in Lightroom / No Comments

The big news for today (actually released last night) is that the public beta for Lightroom 4 is now available for download. You can download it at labs.adobe.com

Some of the new features include the ability to use the adjustment brush for white balance and noise corrections and better controls for highlights and shadows. Additional features include video editing, book creation, and soft proofing for print or display. My favorite feature so far is the soft proofing – way easier to do in Lightroom than in Photoshop!

There are many other little things that have been enhanced for a better workflow and save lots of time in the post processing. Check it out – it’s definitely worth it. I’ll be doing more in depth postings soon. Have fun with it! Love to hear your thoughts – leave a comment below.

UPDATE March 5, 2012 Lightroom 4 has been released at $79 upgrade and $149 full purchase – schweeeet!

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