Aunt Carol

The second assignment was due this evening for my Photoshop course at Algonquin College. I was so happy with my image, my restoration work and my colourizing but not so pleased with my grades. I got an A- in restoration and only a B+ in my colourizing.The original image I used, my Aunt Carol on a pinto pony, can be seen above and the restoration work I did prior to colourizing can be seen below.And the final image is below. I think it is worth more than an A- and B+ but apparently the instructor did not.
Once again I must console myself with the fact that no one in the course really did any better and most of them got lower marks. But I strive for perfection, especially when it comes to my photography.
There are only three more classes left once tonight is complete and then I get two months off from night courses which will be a really nice treat. I am still looking forward to taking something more photography based again though in the fall.

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Damage Found

I went to my parents' house on Saturday and went through their old photo albums. They were primarily photos of my dad and his siblings - a few of his ancestors (parents, grandparents and further back). I picked out three that were pretty damaged and I think would be challenging to fix (and therefore give me a good grade in my class).
Damaged Photograph #1: My grandparents (Beach) on their wedding day. This is literally the only photo of their wedding according to my Dad. It has some rips along the right side and a great noise from dust and scratches. There are no significant markings on their facings however which would make this image pretty easy to restore. It is pretty much my safety restoration photograph for this assignment.
Damaged Photograph #2: Beach children with dog. This photograph has tons of noise from dust and minor scratches. It also has some pretty significant damage to the edges of the photograph and has multiple large tears in the central area of the photograph. There is some damage to the face of Aunt Diana, Tom and my Dad. This one would be a challenge, but I believe it is doable.Damaged Photograph #3: Aunt Carol on a horse. This is a photograph of my Dad's eldest sister, Carol. I am not entirely sure how old she is, but she is on a pinto pony. My mom says these horse would come around to the houses (even in Timmins where she was at the time) and you could put your kids on them to have their picture taken. The photograph is in pretty good shape in terms of dust and scratches. It has two large fold marks down and across the image one of which runs straight through Aunt Carol's eye while the other goes across the horse. I believe this image is fixable (by myself) but it will also be a challenge.I am going to restore all three of these images and then pick the best on to submit for my class. Hopefully it will be hard to chose which one should be submitted as that will mean I did an excellent job on all three of them. I am definitely looking forward to working on these images - I think it is going to be challenging, fun and rewarding.

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Searching for Damage

We have already been given two assignments in my Photoshop for Photographers course. The first is to remove and replace some features in a photograph of an Elvis sign. It is due on the 28th and I am pretty close to being done despite the fact that I have spent less than 20 minutes on it.
The second assignment is photo restoration. We have to find an old, damaged photograph, scan it in at 300 dpi (or ppi) and the resulting image must be between 5"x7" and 8"x10" in size, depending on the dimensions of the original image. Once we have it scanned in, we have to make it black and white (if it isn't already) and then restore the photograph. The assignment is pretty straightforward up til this point. The next part of this assignment is the exciting part - we have to colour the image! It is exciting to me because I don't currently know how to do this - I have a few ideas, but have never tried it before and don't know the best way to do something like this. Hopefully it will be something new to me and I will be good at it.
I am heading to my parents' house this weekend to go through some old photos with my Dad. Hopefully I will be able to find one with enough damage that I can get a really good mark on it.

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Little Mika Restored

Mika is a friend from my weight loss forum (and Facebook). She recently put up a bunch of her childhood photos on Facebook and I took the liberty to fixing one of them up. Luckily, she wasn't offended and actually liked what I did. It only took me a few minutes to fix it as it really just needed the colour cast removed and a bit of curves work. Above is the original and below is the restored version.

The instructor for my Photoshop course is a professional (as they all are) and does photo restoration as part of his business. He charges between $60 and $80 per hour for restoration work and says that there is pretty good business in it. I am thinking that once I get my photography going in a more professional manner, I should look into restoration. I have been doing bits and pieces here and there both in class and out and find it quite enjoyable.

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Homework and Assignments

On the second night of class (my first night as previously mentioned), we were given an old, slightly damaged photo to restore as homework. I found it quite easy and only spent about 30-45 minutes on it. When the instructor looked at them last night, I wasn't entirely pleased with his response but he gave similar ones to every student in the class so I am not upset about it. He then gave us our first assignment (due on the 28th of May). It is an Elvis photo (or rather a photo of a sign for an Elvis museum) that he wants altered in various ways. It seems pretty easy, though it does has one hard change to make but I am sure I will be able to do it. I haven't started it just yet as I haven't really had time but I plan on working on it often to try and get the very best post-production photo I can. Hopefully I get a better response from him this time around.

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