Claudia Abramson - 09:52am Mar 24, 1997
I liked the large photo because of its sense of time and place, but I thought mom didn't look her best in the shot. Then I found another image of her without dad. The light angle and wind direction were similar and she looked happy and pretty so I decided to try a little photoshop magic. I used the pen tool to trace her head from the black and white image. Saved the path as a selection and copied it to a new level on the cropped original of her and dad. I adjusted both sources to approximately the same value scale of black/white and then turned the file into an RGB image. Using the rubber stamp and a variety of transparency settings I removed many of the small scratches and spots and blended the layers together. The final steps were to overlay colors, again with varying levels of transparency, using the paint brush, rubber stamp, and blur tool. My goal was to suggest their youthful romance on a warm sunny summer day. I enjoyed the challenges, but found the technical tasks and the tedious pace of restoring and coloring just plain work. Of course the reward is in the learning, practice, and pleasure in the product, but I'd definitely save this lesson for an advanced class with a very specific goal in which they had a lot of investment.
Larry Vallem - 04:46pm Mar 24, 1997 (#1 of 3)
Claudia, I really like the colors you used and especially the way you managed to keep the old color tones in the faces and yet add the bright colors in Mom's clothes. Hard work but worth every minute. Larry V.
Trish Lynch - 05:02pm Mar 25, 1997 (#2 of 3)
The challenge of this assignment is most definitely for advanced students. Your work is well done and I feel you did a lot of exploring and enhanced the original well. Nice job!
Sandy McAuley - 05:05am Mar 28, 1997 (#3 of 3)
Claudia, I tried to respond to this before, but the download kept cutting off halfway through the picture :-( What I really like about this is that though altered and restored, the picture preserves a feeling of being a window into another time.
Great!