Photo Restoration Blog

With photo retouching there are many ways to retouch a photo or add drama to an image. This is one way.

Adding drama to a portrait

Thanks to leocub from sxc.hu for the image.

Thanks to everyone who has left a review of your experiences, with out you, 200 positive reviews would never have been possible. Thanks again for your continued custom, we will always be here when you need us.

with a million thanks

Neil

Photo restoration of faces with a piece missing is always a tricky restoration to perform. If it is not known how the facial features appeared in the original and there is no reference then these features have to be retouched from pieces of the original photo. The face has to be visualized complete and then a bit a time, restored using tiny bit of tone and texture from the original photograph.

Photo restoration and rebuilding a face with a piece missing

In this close up crop of a photo, a grade 3 restoration, the nose and eyes are almost completely gone.  There is no reference photo for the missing eyes and nose. This restoration was performed by taking what little information there was and teasing it out to complete the picture. A patch of skin tone was first applied to the nose area and then shaded in to match. The tiny piece of eye was cut and enlarged and flipped and then using the eye lines and pupil the missing eye was slowly rebuilt. The nose was built from the existing nose texture and then shaded and blended the texture.

These is no magic wand for a photo restoration like this, it is time and care that makes a face with a missing piece become whole again. It can sometimes seem that the final outlay for such a small amount of damage does not equate  and that the effort that is put into restoring old photos is harder to appreciate.

“I was truly delighted with the photo restoration achieved by Image Restore. The 90 year old photo was badly damaged, particularly round the facial area. By the time Neil had worked his magic you wouldn’t have known it wasn’t in original condition. The work was turned round very quickly and communications were excellent throughout. Highly recommended.” L Davis 1st May 2010

Here are two recent photoshop entry winners, photo restoration skills used once again but for photomontage art.

Image-Restore showing off their photoshop skills to make great photoshop art.

Photoshop skills used here to enter another competition not for photo restoration but for montage art.

The fly won 3rd place prize in pxleyes photoshop competition

Created in photoshop with just the figures used from another photo

This next image came 2nd in pxleyes photoshop competition

Hope you like them!

Retouching eyes is a way to improve a portrait. This is a technique I picked up along the photo restoration and retouching road.

Above are some eyes from a portrait from Michael Herb at 204Studios. They have a round studio flash reflected in them. Some say this is attractive and softens the eyes but this is a matter of opinion. Maybe you want to add your own reflection in the eye that suits your style? I have included a layers snap shot of a process to change them.

The bottom layer has the reflection removed. The layer above “whites”, is a soft white brush sprayed in the whites of the eye and then reduced in opacity and masked. this softens the whites.

The “reflection” layer is a single dab of white masked to make a triangular shaped reflection.

Above that is a small white dot, which simulates the main point of light.

Next up is a colour layer to add more of a warm hue to eyes with the centre pupil masked out.

Finally a splash of red also reduced on opacity in the corners of the eyes to remove the grey look and warm up the eyes some more.

The very top layer is just the original so we can refer back to it to see the changes we made.

You then set about retouching the face and skin in your usual way. I hope this retouching eyes article helped you.

Neil

Photo retouching a portrait or fashion shot. If you need  a portrait  to have punch and depth its a good idea to clean up any distracting highlights or shadows to keep focus on the centre of interest. Add some depth of field to give a long lens look which also emphasises the main focal point. Most fashion is shot with a long lens to compress the facial features which gives a more flattering look. Wide angle lenses tend to emphasise noses and other unwanted protrusions. Once the main clean up is done the retouching the portrait can be carried out, smoothing skin and tone and shaping if need be. The final stage would be add the drama to the shot by creating and HDR look or high contrast black and white or other proven technique.

My take on a HDR style portrait and portrait retouch. Many thanks to Kenzins1977 for the image.

Portrait retouching with drama and depth of field

Notes: Portrait Retouched. Skin and reshaped nose, brightened eyes, lightened face, darkened image, made HDR style, dodged and burned to enhance drama, added depth of field to simulate a longer lens.

Drama added with depth of field and HDR style processing