jim100361

You're right, the drop shadow is the perfect touch. I tried the AA on the smaller text as well, but it made it too narrow and ugly when a drop shadow was applied, so I removed the AA from that portion and used only the drop shadow. Here's the update:

Here's the adjustment: And the previous version (for a closer comparison): EDIT: I'm not sure what happened, I had a separate layer in there that had "beams of light" in the vicinity of the lens flare, but they don't seem to show now. I may need to look into this deeper and see what I forgot to do because I didn't remove the layer. Maybe I should've set the lens flar layer to overlay. I'll check it out this evening.

OK, I'll give it another try. BTW, I wasn't aware (until yesterday) that saving in the pdn format maintains each distinct layer for future editing. Sadly, for the image in question, I'll have to do it all over. But, in the meantime here's my latest: Here are the source files:

Here's another try:

It seemed a bit awkward to put a shadow underneath (I'm assuming your talking about between the guitar and the bench seat). The shadow direction is going towards the rear of the guitar, that doesn't give much room on the bench to add shadow, especially since the shadow would be predominantly toward the backside of the guitar and adding some on the bench seat itself would be negligible (hardly noticeable) in my humble opinion.

In regards to the rainy palm tree picture, I think you did an awesome job. About the only thing different that I would've done would have been to flip one of the tree images horizontally and then maybe rotate to give a slightly different angle, this would make a bit less obvious that it's a cloned tree. It's great work though nonetheless: very real looking effect. The desktop image with the colored bars is almost reminiscent of a stage that you might see for some award show or something of the sort whereas you have those nice shiny floors and bright backdrops. 3D effect (depth) would make it even more so.

Nothing fancy, just a quick tribute to My Hero the Yellow M&M!!!

Thank you for the kind words. Just a comment for others (I don't know if people noticed it or not). With the background pictures on the Ovation Guitar advertisements I selected portions of the distant trees and used Unfocus to try to give the pictures a bit of "reality" and depth since the guitars in the foreground should be the primary focus. Also I tried to select a guitar that (reasonably) fit the picture - black for the nighttime and green for the moss.

Taking my work one step further: The graphic on the right was something I did awhile ago for our Game Clan (Day of Defeat - Weary Soldier's Haven). I started with an image of my family's Coat of Arms and did some erasing and copying and pasting to create it. So yesterday, I decided I would have a one of kind piece (I guess it'll be collectible now - lol)!

My latest piece: And here are the source pics: EDIT: I was staring at the picture and I noticed an oversight on my part. I should've added shadow coming from the tree onto a portion of the right side of the rock and maybe a portion of the guitar. Again... live and learn! EDIT: Here's the source pictures: Added this:

Here's my submission:

In the past (on some eariler attempts - copies I no longer have), I would simply copy and paste very small pieces (zoom in on the photo) from an area closest to the damaged portion of the photo. This provides that you keep the colors and shading closest to the original. In this last attempt I used this method, but I also tried something new: smudging I did this fairly extensively in the woman's hair and other places as well (like in the child's dress). In the area of the child's dress after I got most of the color corrected, I selected several areas and added noise. This gave the texture a more "normal" appearance as smudging made it too smooth. In the stained area (at least the lighter portions), I selected these areas and using color balance I would make adjustments to essentially filter out the blue (of course I had to correct the other two colors to reduce the area from being too red or yellow or green, etc.) Once I had the blue filtered out and the area still being selected, I then adjusted the light level of the area (as the staining caused the area to be darker) and lightened it up to more closely match with the photo. The darker areas of the stain I used the copy and paste and smudging method. Most of this work was done by zooming in on the areas I was working on. Most of the time I increased the size to 600% or 700%. The adjustments to the smudging would vary depending on how fine the area was that I was working on at the time. When doing the hair, the brush size would be very small, when working on the child's dress (breast/chest portion), then a larger brush could be used. Of course when using the smudging method in the hair, the practice would be to do it in the direction that the hair is arranged. EDIT: Here's the funniest part: First, here's the website where I got the original photo: http://www.perfectap...d-tinted-photo/ I never saw their finished work until after I posted this particular reply. You can visit that link and see their fixed version as it compares to mine. You can see that I didn't get the puffed sleeve portion of the little girls dress right (nor the child's necklace for that matter).

Thanx. I enjoy doing them (though my eyes may differ in that opinion). The latest restoration was very challenging, and also a bit disappointing. I try to put my best effort into them, but I'm personally dissatisfied over one aspect in particular. The little girls necklace. Because it was stained so badly, it was very difficult to distinguish the features of it. So I had to recreate what I thought I saw or at least improvise on it, and then after it was done, it somehow still didn't appear that I got it right. Also in darkening it a bit to bring out a bit more detail from the pic was good, except the shading in the woman's cheek somehow looks phony as a result (a lack of fading from the dark to the light). But that's okay I guess, I'll just move on and see if I can't improve as I proceed onward. Thanx again!

Here's my most recent attempt to restore an old (color) photograph. I don't know these people, I simply googled "damaged color photograph" and came up with the subject picture.

Thanx for the advice. I downloaded the AA Assistant .dll this morning and will give 'er a whirl in my future projects.

Here's a look at all the stuff I've done so far (most are scattered about in these forums):

Here's my hand at this:

I didn't know what number to assign it, so I winged it!

Truly a fine piece of work, I love it!

Thanx, obviously placement of the "props" has a lot to do with it. As you may note, because the original 3 boys were in the shade, the 2 which I used also had to be in the shade, and likewise with the girl having been from a sunny exposure, she too had to be placed in a like environment (sunny) and it also made sense in her case (in my mind) that she was running towards them - at least that is what I wanted). Then there's always the Google search for "subjects". Looking for just the right ones to fit with the scenery you've selected, etc. At any rate, I thank you for the compliment, hopefully I can come up with some others (images). I appreciate it.

Actually, it only took a couple hours, but the method I use (copying and pasting from the picture itself in order to maintain shading as close as possible to the area to be fixed) created a messy looking bit of patchwork, so I added noise to the photo to try to mask this "patchwork" and adjusted the coloring a bit too to then mask some of this noise that I added, saved the file and closed it, then reopened it and tried to then remove the noise. I wanted to remove as much of the noise as possible so that it wasn't full of speckles and ugly and in doing so it also removed quite a bit of the detail.

Somebody asked for some help in another thread to see if some photos could be repaired. I wanted to try my hand at one, so here's my result:

I mean no offense, but would it not appear more natural if you copied a tooth, shaped it (maybe even smudge it a tad), and then pasted the newly shaped tooth and add a touch a blur?

From these: To this: From these: To this:

Nice