Photo Re-Touching

[Buster Narum]

I didn't want to keep discussing this topic in the main Gambo thread, so I thought I'd make a separate thread where it could be discussed freely.

Originally Posted by FatJack

One problem, as you discovered with Oliver and Dr. Strangeglove is that no one thing works equally on all photos.

If I'm doing a quickie fix, I go through iPhoto and just juice up the blue as far as I need to. Sometimes I run it through twice...just juicing up the blue (iPhoto has a simplistic color balance with just Blue/Yellow and Red/Green; I don't touch the red at all). Now...that's just for a quickie fix. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But, if I really want to "fix" the images, I find the only way to go is to work on each piece individually (down, even, to doing the whites of the eyes separately). I do that in GIMP, where you can lasso the elements you want to work on. And GIMP has numerous tools for color balance, hue, saturation, brightness, et. al. Even then, flesh tones are problematic. And, sometimes, you put in all that effort and still end up with a mess.

FJ, I tried your lassoing technique on Gerry Arrigo and Bob Miller from the 1970 White Sox. In both pics, the head portion of the photo was very out of whack - Miller's was dark red and Arrigo's was glowing like the sun. Neither pic turned out great, but the head lasso made them much better.

One thing I discovered this week was the technique of using adjustment layers to get the colors right. There are always things that software can do that you don't have any idea about, and this was one of them for me. It's a nine-step process - you have three color slides, cyan-red, magenta-green and yellow-blue, then you have shadows, midtones and highlights for each slide. It allows for some really good eyeballing as you work, and seems to produce good results pretty dependably. I'd used these tools before, but not as layers of the main photo. That makes all the difference. You just merge them back before you finish up.

And man, you are certainly right about working on something for a long time and still having to chuck it!

Thanks