Picture Repair Help

[thyme4me]

I have a dilemma on my hands and am turning to this community for their opinions. I have a photo of my parents in one of the movie booths kissing, young love! The problem is this photo needs alot of help. I've used Cassies tutorial HTDT No. 9 Torn & Tattered and below I'm showing you the before and after. Unfortunately, it's about the best I can do. I don't know how much further I can repair this. Does anyone have any advice how to repair the large missing patches? Or would it be better if I just let it be and settle for my repaired one so far?

[DesignerDigitals]

Originally Posted by thyme4me

I have a dilemma on my hands and am turning to this community for their opinions. I have a photo of my parents in one of the movie booths kissing, young love! The problem is this photo needs alot of help. I've used Cassies tutorial HTDT No. 9 Torn & Tattered and below I'm showing you the before and after. Unfortunately, it's about the best I can do. I don't know how much further I can repair this. Does anyone have any advice how to repair the large missing patches? Or would it be better if I just let it be and settle for my repaired one so far?

If you're interested, a old friend of mine does photo repair: Gail Wiley Designs - Photo Restoration

[katie pertiet]

did you use the clone tool Kris? it would be tedious but could be done you'd just need to do lots of sampling... HTH!

[katie pertiet]

or you could copy and paste parts of the background into other layers, rotate to match, reduce opacity so you can position well, and then blend the edges together with the eraser tool...

[thyme4me]

Thanks Randy, I'll keep them in mind. Katie, I mostly used the healing brush but did try the clone tool. I worked on this last evening and then tossed and turned all night trying to figure out how to fix it better. The thought of copying and paste came to mind, I'll give that a try, thanks. "Patience" is the key word here. The hardest part for me would be doing their chins justice. Maybe I shouldn't be looking for perfection. But keep the photo as far as I have corrected it, showing their love has been worn and torn at times but they are still together.

[katie pertiet]

Originally Posted by thyme4me

showing their love has been worn and torn at times but they are still together.

this statement is perfect Kris--sounds like a page in the making! love that attitude about it!

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

First of all, your repairs thus far are wonderful.

Secondly, I'm leaning toward the idea that you should leave it as it is. It's so cool and you know designers work tirelessly to make products look THIS vintage, right? LOL

I think you could leave it like this and make a great page with it.

[audrey77]

I think the tear gives it character.

[carollee]

I like the character of how it is. But if you were trying to fill in some of the gaps, could you perhaps clone part of one of his other fingers to replace the part of the missing finger? As a start anyway.

I still like it as it is.

[ShaylaSharp]

Use some careful copy& paste--don't forget to feather the area of selection by 2 or 3 pixels. Also, don't forget about the patch tool, it can be much more effective than cloning sometimes.