Photoshop.CS.Bible [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Retouching Photographs

Having seen how the clone stamp tool and healing brush work, the following sections examine a few sample uses for the tools. For example, let's say you're confronted by the worst image in the world, shown in Figure 7-14. It's not the subject of the photo that's a problem — that's my son, after all, whom I consider to be beautiful even when shot from a distance of a few inches. Rather the problems with this image are ones of technique. The autofocus locked down a couple of seconds before the shutter release fired, giving my son ample time to rush the camera as he is wont to do. The image was shot to film and then scanned from a 35mm negative, which introduced a wealth of dust particles, hairs, and other fibers.

Figure 7-14: A very bad photograph, made worse by a bad scanning process. How does one fix such a wretched image in Photoshop?

So the question becomes, what's a person to do when confronted with such an abomination? Naturally, one answer is to reshoot the photo using manual focus if necessary. You might also want to take a moment to clean the glass on your scanner. And come to think of it, I probably would've done well to avoid rubbing the negative in dirt, an extra step I performed to make the image as filthy as possible for purposes of this example.

But let's say none of those solutions is an option. Let's say, my son's all grown up, I lost the original negative, and my scanner blew up and burst into flames. In a nutshell, this is the only picture I have to work with. What am I to do?

After taking a moment to allow that mad feeling of panic to pass, I investigate my tools. And as luck would have it, Photoshop actually offers an automatic function for images such as this. It's called Dust & Scratches, and it's located under the Filter menu in the Noise submenu. Described in more detail in Chapter 10, this filter averages the colors of neighboring pixels with the intent of smearing away imperfections. Unfortunately, as it does so it smears away photographic detail as well. However, in the case of this image, there's not much detail to work with in the first place, so it's not that big a deal. And so it comes to pass that I apply Dust & Scratches using the settings indicated in the left example of Figure 7-15. In a few seconds, the filter gets rid of every single dust speck and scratch in the photo. But in doing so, it gums up a few details more than I would have liked, most notably reducing the size of the pupil and reflected light in my son's eye.

Figure 7-15: I have one of two options with this photo — apply Dust & Scratches, which takes just a few seconds but results in some pretty blobby detail (left), or fix the image manually, which takes forever but produces better results (right).

So being a good father, I undo the automatic fix and set about correcting the photo manually with the healing brush and a bit of clone stamp tool. The healing brush fares well in flat areas of flesh, like the cheeks, nose, and forehead. But it introduces incongruous colors around the lips, eyes, and other edges, which is where I use the clone stamp tool instead. A half hour later, I finally arrive at the image shown on the right side of Chapter 10), which firms up some of the detail to produce the image shown in Figure 7-16.

Figure 7-16: The final touch is to sharpen the image using the Unsharp Mask filter. The result is by no means perfect — Photoshop can't produce detail out of thin air — but it's adorable, and that's good enough for me.

The lesson to draw from all this is that Dust & Scratches may suffice for purging fibers and defects from a low-quality photo like this one, but it's hardly a professional-level tool. In fact, and I'm going to be painfully blunt here, Dust & Scratches is, generally speaking, a worthless wad of goober-covered tooth decay. In almost all cases, the better alternative is to roll up your sleeves, get real with your image, and fix its flaws manually — not to mention lovingly — with the healing brush and clone stamp tools. You'll be glad you did.

Restoring an old photograph

Dust, hairs, gloops, and other blemishes are introduced during the scanning process. But what about more severe problems that trace back to the original image? Figure 7-17 is a prime example. This photograph was shot sometime before 1910. It's a wonderful photo, but 90 years is a long time for something as fragile and transient as a scrap of paper. It's torn, faded, stained, creased, and flaking. The normally simple act of extracting it from its photo album took every bit as long as scanning it.

Figure 7-17: This photo has seen better days. Then again, I hope to look as good when I'm 90 years old.

But despite the photo's rough condition, I was able to restore it in Photoshop, as evidenced by Figure 7-18. After about an hour and a few hundred brushstrokes, I had the image well in hand. If an hour sounds like a long time to fix a few rips and scrapes, bear in mind that photographic restoration is a labor-intensive activity that relies heavily on your talents and your mastery of Photoshop. The job of the clone stamp and healing brush tools is to make your edits believable, but they do little to automate the process. Retouching calls for a human touch, and that's where you come in.

Figure 7-18: The same image after about an hour of work with the clone stamp tool and healing brush.

The main trick in all this is to Alt-click (Option-click on the Mac) in an area that looks like it'd do a good job of covering up a blemish and then drag over the blemish. Repeat about 250 times, and you're finished. So rather than document every single brushstroke — which would be tedious and, I fear, about as enlightening as a day at the box factory — I'll share some advice that specifically addresses the art of photo restoration:

Toss the bad channels: Most images in this kind of condition are black-and-white. Scan them in color and then peruse the color channels to see which grayscale version of the image looks best. In my case, the original image had lots of yellow stains around the tears. So when I viewed the individual color channels, as illustrated in Figure 7-19, I was hardly surprised to see dark blotches in the blue channel. (Blue is the opposite of yellow, so where yellow is prominent, the blue channel was dark.) The red channel turned out to be in the best shape, so I switched to the red channel and disposed of the other two by choosing Image Mode Grayscale. The simple act of trashing the green and blue channels went a long way toward getting rid of the splotches.

Figure 7-19: A quick peek through the color channels shows the red channel (left) to be my best choice. The blotches are most evident in the girl's blouse, enlarged in the bottom row.

View actual pixels: When possible, work at 100-percent view size or larger. It's difficult to judge scratches and other defects accurately at smaller zoom ratios, but if you must, stick with the "smooth views," 50 percent and 25 percent.

Keep an eye on the source: Keep the original photo next to you as you work. What looks like a scratch on screen may actually be a photographic element, and what looks like an element may be a scratch. Only by referring to the original image can you be sure.

TipWait to crop: Don't crop until you're finished retouching the image. You'd be surprised how useful that extra garbage around the perimeter is when it comes to covering up really big tears.

Vary the brush hardness: Use hard brush shapes against sharp edges. But when working in general areas such as the shadow, the ground, and the wall, mix it up between soft and hard brushes using the shortcuts Shift+[ and Shift+]. Staying random is the best way to avoid harsh transitions, repeating patterns, and other digital giveaways.

Keep it short: Paint in short strokes. This helps keep things random, but it also means you don't have to redraw a big long brushstroke if you make a mistake.

TipUse your history: When you do make a mistake, don't automatically press Ctrl+Z (z -Z for you Mac folks). In many cases, you'll be better off using the history brush to paint back the image as it appeared before the last healing brush or clone stamp operation. As luck would have it, I explain more about the history brush in the "Stepping Back through Time" section later in this chapter.

Turn Aligned off: Another way to stay random is to change the source of your clone frequently. That means Alt-clicking (Option-clicking on the Mac) after every second or third brushstroke. And keep the Aligned check box turned off. An aligned clone is not a random one.

Try out brush modes: Feel free to experiment with the brush modes and, when using the clone stamp tool, the Opacity setting. For example, magnified in Figure 7-20, the girl has a scratch on the left eye (her right). I corrected this by cloning the right eye with the healing brush, but while the detail looked great, the healing brush over-burned the effect, as in the middle image. To fix this, I set the brush mode for the healing brush to Screen. Then I cloned a bit of the shadowed flesh onto the eye to get the finished effect.

Figure 7-20: The left eye in the original image was scratched (top). I used the healing brush to copy the right eye onto the left (middle), but in trying to match the shadows on the left half of the face, Photoshop took the eye too dark. So I set the brush mode to Screen and healed a little flesh over the eye to even things out (bottom).

TipFade the clone: You also can try applying Edit Fade to change the opacity and brush mode of the pixels you just cloned. This little trick can be extremely useful when using the healing brush because it means you can introduce an Opacity value into the proceedings where none existed previously. Curious? After applying a healing brushstroke, choose Edit Fade or press Ctrl+Shift+F (z -Shift-F on the Mac). You get an Opacity value and no Mode option, exactly the opposite of what you see in the Options bar when using the tool.

Keep the grain: Don't attempt to smooth out the general appearance of grain in the image. Grain is integral to an old photo and hiding it usually makes the image look faked. If your image gets too smooth, or if your cloning results in irregular patterns, select the problem area and apply Filter Noise Add Noise. Enter very small Amount values (2 to 6 percent). Monochromatic noise tends to work best. If necessary, press Ctrl+F (z -F on the Mac) to reapply the filter one or more times.

With Photoshop's history brush at your side, there's really no way to permanently harm an image. You can even let four or five little mistakes go and then correct them en masse with the history brush. Just click to the left of the state in the History palette that directly precedes your first screwup and then drag with the history brush. It's easy, satisfying, and incredibly freeing. To paint back to the original scanned image, click in front of the very top item in the History palette. For more information, check out "Stepping Back through Time" later in this chapter.

Eliminating distracting background elements

The stamp and healing tools also come in handy for eliminating background action that competes with the central elements in an image. For example, Figure 7-21 shows a nifty news photo from the Reuters image library. Although the image is well-photographed and historic and all that good stuff, that rear workman doesn't contribute anything to the scene; in fact, he draws your attention away from the foreground drama. I mean, hail to the worker and everything, but the image would be better off without him. The following steps explain how I eradicated the offending workman from the scene.

Figure 7-21: You have to love that old Soviet state-endorsed art. So bold, so angular, so politically intolerant. But you also have to lose that rear workman.

On the other hand, any approach that eliminates an element as big as the workman can also correct the most egregious of photographic flaws, including mold, holes, and fire damage. You can even restore photos that have been ripped into pieces, a particular problem for pictures of ex-boyfriends, current boyfriends, and potential boyfriends. These steps qualify as major reconstructive surgery.

STEPS: Eliminating Distracting Elements from an Image

My first step was to clone the area around the neck of the statue with a soft brush shape. Abandoning the controlled clicks I recommended in the last section, I permitted myself to drag with the clone stamp tool — which generally fares better than the healing brush for this kind of work — because I needed to cover relatively large portions of the image. The apartment building (or whatever that structure is) behind the floating head is magnificently out of focus, just the thing for hiding any incongruous transitions I might create with the stamp tool. So I warmed up to the image by retouching this area first. Figure 7-22 shows my progress.

Figure 7-22: Cloning over the background worker's upper torso was fairly easy. Because the background building is so regular and out of focus, it provided me with a wealth of material from which to clone.

I covered the workman's body by cloning pixels from both his left and right sides. I also added a vertical bar where the workman's right arm used to be to maintain the rhythm of the building. Remember, variety is the key to using the clone stamp tool: If you consistently clone from one portion of the image, you create an obvious repetition that the viewer can't help but notice.

The next step was to eliminate the workman's head. This was a little tricky because it involved rubbing up against the focused perimeter of Lenin's neck. I had to clone some of the more intricate areas using a hard-edged brush. I also ended up duplicating some of the neck edges to maintain continuity. In addition, I touched up the left side of the neck (your left, not Lenin's) and removed a few of the white spots from his face. You see my progress in Figure 7-23.

Figure 7-23: I eliminated the workman's head and touched up details around the perimeter of Lenin's neck.

Now for the hard part: eliminating the worker's legs and lower torso. See that metal fragment that the foreground worker is holding? What a pain. Its edges were so irregular, there was no way I could restore it if I messed up while trying to eradicate the background worker's limbs. So I lassoed around the fragment to select it and chose Select Inverse to protect it. I also chose Select Feather and gave the selection a Radius value of 1 to soften its edges slightly. (The next chapter explains the lasso tool and the Inverse and Feather commands in more detail.) This prevented me from messing up the metal no matter what edits I made to the background worker's remaining body parts.

From here on, it was just more cloning. Unfortunately, I barely had anything from which to clone. See the little bit of black edging between the two "legs" of the metal fragment? That's it. This was all I had to draw the strip of edging to the right of the fragment that eventually appears in Figure 7-24. To pull off this feat, I made sure that the Aligned check box was turned off in Options bar. Then I Alt-clicked (or Option-clicked) on the tiny bit of edging and click-click-clicked my way down the street.

Figure 7-24: After about 45 minutes of monkeying around with the clone stamp tool — a practice declared illegal during Stalin's reign — the rear workman is gone, leaving us with an unfettered view of the dubious V. I. Lenin himself.

Unfortunately, the strip I laid down in Step 4 appeared noticeably blobular — it looked for all the world like I clicked a bunch of times. Darn. To fix this problem, I clicked and Shift-clicked with the smudge tool set to about 30-percent pressure. This smeared the blobs into a continuous strip but, again, the effect was noticeable. It looked as if I had smeared the strip. So I went back and cloned some more, this time with the Opacity value set to 50 percent.

To polish off the image, I chose Select Deselect and ran the sharpen tool along the edges of the metal fragment. This helped to hide my retouching around it and further distinguished the fragment from the unfocused background. I also cropped away 120 or so pixels from the right side of the image to correct the balance.

What I hope I demonstrated in these steps is this: Cloning with the stamp tool requires you to alternate between patching and whittling away. There are no rights and wrongs, no hard-and-fast rules. Anything you can find to clone is fair game. As long as you avoid mucking up the foreground image, you can't go wrong (so I guess there is one hard-and-fast rule). If you're careful and diligent, no one but you will notice your alterations.