Photo Restoration Hints Twenty Six...What to do about teeny tiny cellphone pictures that are priceless?

OK...We are all going to get this request, if you have not already....someone emails you a picture taken on a cell phone in bad light at a concert of them with a very famous singing group star.

Your lizard brain (amygdala) says, "RUN"  and don't look back*
But she or he is (enter friendship or family relationship here___)  and you cannot say no.  It's a teeny little 5k file and you know you can make it a little better but it probably won't be much improved when you are done.

Nah...you say yes!  Because you love a challenge and you love her.

OK...

Down and dirty tips.

Make a 5x7 new file at 2400 dpi.  Why?  because you are going to cheat using Photo Shops amazing abilities to "interpolate data" .  Or, in other words, Photo Shop is about to fill in the missing dots.  You have sooo many missing dots in your 5k picture.  If you take the picture itself and size it up to 5x7 inches, you will see what I mean.  Big squares.  Nothing to work with.

After you made you new 5x7 piece of blank "paper", PLACE the picture on it.  File/Place for all you Microsoft users.  Then, hold down the 'shift' key and pull it by a corner to fill up the frame until you have a picture forming.  You can always crop more later to size.  Then press enter.  You should see more information or 'pixels' on the screen.  OK...it is not very pretty yet but it is a little bit better.  If not, stop here and go to posters.com and find a picture of the famous person for them and you are done.

But, if you want, here are some things you can do to make it better.  Use a soft airbrush and paint in some details lightly in light multiple layers.  Make another layer and use the invert tool to make a "negative of the picture and adjust it back about 50 percent to fill in some details.  Click on the layer to the right and determine if it helps to fade more or less into one picture.  (see my blog on blending or go and buy Understanding Adobe Photoshop CS6 by Richard Harrington).

The trick it to add layers of information to the picture and fade in an out using the percentage tabs for that layer on the work area.  You can always make the picture smaller...that always helps, but try these techniques and see if you don't get any better results.

It takes a couple of hours before you finally give up, if you do give up.  And like Stuart Smalley said on Saturday Night Live, That's ok, you are ok,  you are still a good person ... blah blah blah.
If you don't give up, you will learn some new stuff in Photoshop.  You will learn about layers and how incredible the whole concept of layering is.

If it bores the snot out of you, go on to something else.  Some of us are crazy enough to think that we can perform miracles.  Wanna try?  Try this picture of my friend with a One Direction star...sorry, I don't know his name.

Please send me your successful results if you are so inclined and I will post them on a future blog.

Again, thanks for continuing to follow my blog.  I appreciate it.

Best Regards

Renee L. Theuer

*a·myg·da·la

əˈmigdələ/

noun

ANATOMY

1. a roughly almond-shaped mass of gray matter inside each cerebral hemisphere, involved with the experiencing of emotions.