[tulal]

I don't know if this post will adhere to this forum but here it is:

I have this old photograph scanned, which I am trying to rejenuvate and bring back to life using my old and trusty Photoshop. I need suggestions as to what all you people thing is wrong in the photograph.
First I think the lot of tubelights in the room are playing with the correct skintone of the people....the quality is also not good.


Below is the just scanned photograph I am referring to:



[ December 14, 2001: Message edited by: tulal ]

[jr]

it's dull, fix the brightness, contrast, higher both..... and also play with the colors until you find the right mix. it's pretty easy to fix this picture actually.

[Kuzya]

wow .. no offense or anything .. but can you notice how the only white person there 'on the left' kinda apart away from the rest of the group .. damn i bet he feels like a minority .. mm just a random blabering .. ohh and there are many tutorials online on how to restore photos..

good luck

[[Shizo]]

Here what i did before sleep, you can do a lot better if you do something leik tihis plus more by hand, and take time on it.
First i added contrast, changed Levels and then Color balance a bit, and finally added some sharpness.

[tulal]

Thank you Shizo, Kuzya and jr for your responce.
Heres what I have come up till now. I changed the color balance, brightness, contrtast and the levels.

I think I now have two problems...
first: To me the background, I think is too bright..i wonder how I can fix that.
second...yes, the man on the top left is too much with the background..he is too light...w
what do you people say?

[tulal]

Ok here is my latest attempt. I have also cropped out the bright and too much extra background which was distracting the eye from the main subject of the snap...i invite your comments and suggestions.

[Marvel]

Tulal, I think the problem in your attempts is that the white/light areas get both as bright and thus become one area - I'd try to maintain the contrast of the bright colors while darkening the mid-tones and the shadows - the tone you have seems okay, though a tad bluish. Here's what I came up with:

Of course the thing is hard and the original could be a bit better (the jpg-artefacts make the job even more difficult). Hope you achieve what you're looking for here.

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: Marvel ]

[wayfinder]

nevermind

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: wayfinder ]

[dkimblad]

I always start by separating everything into separate layers. Bodies in one layer, background in one layer and skin in one layer for example.

The problems with this image is too much light from behind and that it's a bit oversaturated. Along with the bad quality of course.

I've desaturated it a bit and blurred the background. Then I used smart blur to get rid of some of the jpg-artefacts.
With better masks you can improve it further.
Another filter I often use is (pixelate/)facet. If you size up the image, use facet and then bring it back to the original size, you can get it a lot sharper.

[[Shizo]]

Ya, when i said "do by hand" i meant selecting general objects by hand to separate to adjust all properties eseparately from the rest (kinda like equalizers) so for example if you turn up brightness and change colors so ONLY faces look natural and nice, but everything else that you affected by these changes will take it in a different way than faces only...
Anyways do what dkimblad said, plus to fix JPEG artifacts, zoom in and paint out these things by hand, better on separate layer so if it looks 'too overpainted' you can turn down opacity.

[UPDATE!]
go to this page http://www.dpreview.com/learn/Image_Techniques/Color_Correction_Speed_01.htm
it shows some very very good techniques!

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: [Shizo] ]