Before-n-after

I know from experience with my own family that treasured family photos are hard for some people to part with, even if the person requesting them only needs to make a digital copy. (I’m still in my, oh, fifteenth year of waiting patiently for some additional Rice family photos, but who’s counting? *grin*)

Sometimes, I feel a little sheepish asking if I can make copies, especially if I’m only a relative by marriage.

So what’s a girl to do?

Use her camera!

The LeMar cousins had many photos on display yesterday at the family reunion. It was a dizzying array to a self-appointed family archivist like myself. So instead of fussing over the logistics of making hard copies, I just took pictures of the pictures.

Now, this works well in some circumstances, not so much in others. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to try.

This handsome devil is Joel’s uncle, Cliff LeMar. The photo on the left is the raw image, straight from my camera. The photo was hanging on a corkboard inside the shelter at Grandview Park. I only took one shot. Multiple shots are preferable.

Photoshop to the rescue! I started with a Levels adjustment layer. I fuss with this sometimes, but I just opted to go with the Auto adjustment. Then I used the Warp tool to pull in the sides a bit and give dear Cliff better posture. The photo had been trimmed to fit in an oval frame, so I begged, borrowed and stole from around the portrait to fill in the corners. Basically, I used the Lasso tool with a good feather of 3px to copy a good section, then I moved the patch over the blank area and blended it with a layer mask and a soft brush. I also needed the Clone Stamp tool and the Patch tool to aid with the blending here and there.

The tricky part was filling in the cut-away parts of Cliff’s suit. I used the same process as above, but I was much more particular in lining up textures and shadows.

The before photo has an obvious yellow cast to it, and the Auto Levels adjustment layer took care of much of it. But I used another Levels adjustment layer, using Cliff’s shirt, which was presumably white in real life, to sample with the White eyedropper and jazz up the rest of the colors. I merged all of the layers I’d created so far into a new layer, and I performed a Variations adjustment on this new layer, making it a teensy bit more blue.

Et voila! A “copy”! Sure, a bit more effort than had I just asked if I could run them safely over to the westside, scan, and run them back. But this way everyone feels safe.

I have a few more to Photoshop, and now I can share copies with all of the LeMar cousins.

Now for those Rice relatives…