Cropping...or how to make the Old fit in Newer Frames Photo Restoration Hints Part Four

As a photo restorer, you will quickly learn that most people just want to stick that picture in a frame without a mat and give it to someone.  We can discuss how to scan through glass to do a photo restoration at a later date. I have had only one epic fail in scanning through glass...but it was enough to get me to think twice before promising too much.  NEVER soak off the picture.  I know that much from working in my darkroom for many years. 

I regress...

You will soon notice that many older pictures are not 4x6 or 4x7 or 8x10.  Soon you realize that if you try to force them to be the right size, they will simply not fit.  Go ahead and take the picture you have just scanned and pretend like you are going to print it.  In the settings, you will quickly see how out of synch your picture is with modern sizes and the amount you will need to crop or ADD to the picture.

We spoke about cloning and you probably have checked into that possibility.  That is a great place to start spreading out the picture to fit in a newer frame.  However, sometimes that just doesn't work.  It's at this time that you need to learn how to cut a mat or go see WilsonsFrameup.com.

If you are too lazy to do that, or if the customer doesn't see the need for the extra expense (usually the case) you can always "frame" it into the size of an 8x10 with a nice white (or color) margin around the picture.  You can do all of this in the printing area.  Add a 3 point or less line around the picture with a "color" margin taken from the picture with the eyedropper tool and you end up with an instant 8x10 with a nice "mat" that will fit into your customer's frame.  Apply this to any size picture such as a 5x7.  The margins will not be exactly the same top to bottom compared to side to side...however, you will have a pleasing picture that looks matted from a distance.  As long as you tell them that without a mat, there is a possibility of the photo sticking to the glass down the line...probably after you are still around doing photo restorations.  By then, there will be another program to instantly fix that, I am sure. 

Next time, I have some hints about saving your work.

To Clone or not to Clone....Photo Restoration Hints Part Three

To Clone or not to Clone?

I spend a bit of time looking at the photo restorations of others.  Most of them are great.  However, I have noticed the tendency of many photo restorers to really rely on cloning.

What is cloning?  Literally, it is picking up one piece of the picture and putting it down on another missing or damaged part.  You really need to pay attention to the size and hardness of the brush to make sure you have smooth transitions in the picture.  I like the round pressure brush and I like to make percentage adjustments constantly on how much to apply to the new area.  Many times I use the automatic brush tools to smooth out the edges.

However, I have seen some really strange uses of the clone tool just to fill space.  Don't forget the brush tool or cropping if the picture starts to look a little weird.  By weird, I mean that there is just not a large enough amount of good section to clone over to the damaged area and you start to get a "pattern" of the cloned part.  Using eyedropper and settings for the type of fill can be very helpful in this area.

Many old pictures have decorative backdrops and curtains.  Some have plants and chairs.  Cloning can rebuild all of these things if you use soft layers and patience.  The faster you try to fix something, the more obvious the "repair" can look.  It is common for good photo restorers to go back a few steps and check to see if they are making a convincing restoration.  I personally have started over completely if I get myself into a mess because I have lost sight of what I am repairing and have gotten to "into" the magic of the tools.

Sometimes the third attempt is the charm.  Next week we will take a quick look at cropping.
Thanks for reading my blog....

Look into my eyes...Photo Restoration Hints Part Two

They say that the eyes are "the window to the soul".  Maybe so.  It's the first thing I look for when considering a photo restoration.  At this posting time, I have a picture that shows a graduation picture with one completely missing eye....Luckily, the customer had another picture in her wallet (different size) with both eyes in tact.  Most of the time, you aren't that lucky.

So, what to do?  Take a good look at how much of the eye is left.  This is important because each eye is different and superimposing the other eye on the picture may make the person look unfamiliar to the customer.

Next, you can copy a portion of the good eye on a separate layer, reverse it and place it as best as you can to the other eye.  You may need to move the eye up or down or decrease its size.  Many times, you can match up the pupils but most of the time you are matching the general points of the eye.  It takes practice but eventually you will be able to match up most of the eye to carefully bring up the differences.

If you have no eye on the other side at all, you need to become creative:  take the eye from one side, reverse it, resize it a little, adjust the angle a little and see what you have.  In many cases, you can copy and eye from another relative in a group shot or other family picture and use it to fill the empty eye.  Chalk one up for family resemblance.  You can even ask the customer to tell you which relative looks the most like the one you are "fixing".  That way, there are fewer surprises for the customer.

You will learn to use layers this way...you can watch a lot of YouTube videos on how to do it.  The truth is "selling" your result to your customer by remembering these hints.

Next time, we will discuss cloning...and how to avoid too much dependence upon it.

Do No Harm...Photo Restoration Hints Part One

Understanding photo restoration is where we start.  Since we are scanning old pictures, make sure to wear clean cotton gloves so as not to add any oils or dirt to the picture.  It is important to assure the customer that you are going to take good care of their precious item and either scan it right there in front of them or make sure you have a supply of clear plastic envelopes that can be secured with a string wrap tie.

The thing I try to remember the most is:  do no harm.  OK, I am not a doctor but it is really easy to
overdo a picture restoration to the point that it looks toooooo good for the time period.  Remember to duplicate the color if there is sepia toning...unless the customer specifically asks you to return it to black and white.  Remember to use the black and white setting in PhotoShop.  Reducing the color saturation doesn't give you the benefit of working with the "colors" in the black and white...more on this later...sometimes a little bit of imperfection is perfect.

If you scan at 300 dpi, you will have enough data to work with in most situations. Sometimes the damage is so severe and the image is so out of focus that 150 might be a better dpi.  The secret is to look at the image magnified to just the beginning of being pixelated in PhotoShop to see what you have.  The moment of truth is finding that even if you do scan at high resolution and do your best fixing it, the picture is not going to look better blown up.  So, when you get a feel for that, take the time to talk to the customer in advance to let them see the magnified image, the amount of information (pixels) that you have to work with and suggest that they keep the picture in the same size or maybe (rarely) smaller.  The more experience you have fixing photos, the more confident you will be when you first get the image.  However, a good magnifying glass and a couple minutes of examination could make a big difference.

Next time, we will look at the EYES...which are very different from one another...unless you have one that is missing....

Photo Restoration...Why I started Restoring Photos for Fun and Some Profit

You've seen the before and after photos of photo restorations...and you wonder how it is done.

First, you just have to have an interest.  There are lots of helpful sites out there to teach you exactly what to do for every type of damage.  I personally got started because my wedding pictures were sitting in a book on the floor next to the kitchen.  When the dishwasher leaked, the water made its way to my wedding pictures.  Horrified, I called my insurance agent who did not have anyone to send me to. 

So I got busy...really busy...and started working on them myself.  I started with a wonderful program called Paint Shop Pro...it was about 99.00 and it taught me how to use the tools of the trade so to speak.  I did some that were too good and they were scary...then I learned how to use the "back" key and take an honest look from beginning to end on what I had done "to" the picture. I advanced to PhotoShop and taught myself using the many books that are available out there for do-it-yourself-ers.  Thousands of restorations later, I still am learning new ways to improve pictures and discovering the incredible depth of tools that are available in PhotoShop.

I know that some people want to know how to do this themselves and will go and get the free software that is available on the web and tutorials from YouTube.  If you want to learn how to do this for your own enjoyment and enlightenment, I recommend you do so.  It is indescribably rewarding to fix something that is really wrecked up!  You may get so hooked on it that you start begging friends and relatives to let you take down their faded photos on their walls to fix them for free like I did.  Once you figure out how to improve a photo that is turning red or just fading away, you will be hooked like I am.....It's ok, though because there are a lot of pictures out there that are going away and so little time.

If you want instant gratification and want to spend a little money to get it done now, there are many professionals out there.  If an affordable price is as important as quality, you will love working with me.  I have lots of satisfied customers and return business because I value the trust people have in me an I am passionate about my work.  

That desire to satisfy customers and preserve memories is what sets me apart from other photo restorers.  I don't need to get rich off your photo restoration...there are amazing rewards in doing the right thing for a reasonable cost.

Enough about me...what have you got that I can help you with?  

How to Connect your Computer to Speakers

My husband gave me his big old Sharper Image speakers and I wanted to use them with my computer. So I got online and searched how to do this. I Googled some good information but not simple enough for me to hook it up because they assumed you already knew the following:

To play speakers on your computer you need an amplifier to power the speakers. You can't just hook up speakers to your computer without one. I didn't know this.

I found an amplifier at amazon.com that cost only 27.00 made by Lepai called a Hi-Fi Stereo Power Digital amplifier. The model number of mine is LP-2020A+. It's very small and has 20w of power.

Next, you need 2 speaker wires--one for each speaker and long enough to reach from each speaker to the back of the amplifier. Each speaker wire splits into two different sides -- one silver and one copper or different colors marked on the outside wire covering. Make sure that you are consistent with the wires--the same color goes to the red and the black for each speaker you hook up to the back of the amplifier. You carefully strip the covering off to expose a little bit of the wire inside. Then you pull down the bottom plastic piece and push the wire into the small hole in the middle. The wire stays tight in the center when you let go of the plastic piece. If you don't get sound, just switch things around until you do.

Plug in the amplifier to your power source. Now, you'll need a way to hook the amplifier to your computer. You need a simple connection that has a headset end that plugs into the headset jack of the computer and the other side is 2 RCA jacks --one white and one red... both male.

When I hooked this up the first time with a simple "y" connection, it worked fine when I plugged it into my iPod. But I got a loud hum when I hooked the speakers through the amplifier to my computer using the connection cord above. I remembered seeing a gizmo for sale on the internet that you could buy that would solve the humming problem.

So I went to Radio Shack and found a helpful employee that told me about a Ground-Loop Isolator, model 270-054 (about 17.00). The cord has a D Battery sized isolator in the middle of the wires that stops the hum. There are two pieces on the card--put them together until you have one end that goes into a headphone jack and two ends that hook up to your amplifier.

When I first plugged the headphone jack side to the computer, I didn't have a hum but there was a very high pitched frequency interference that bugged me. So, I played around with the volume setting on the amplifier device and the volume on iTunes and found a setting that has neither hum nor hiss.

This works fine for someone who wants to hear podcasts and isn't a super audiophile. If you are into bass that rocks the room, buy an expensive amplifier because this one is only 20W. This is the solution that works great for me for under $50.00 without driving my husband out of the house. The vintage analog amplifiers on eBay are more expensive than the new digital ones on amazon.com. I know that audiophiles can tell the difference--I can't. It's the same basic principle whether you use a small or large amplifier.

Hope this works for you.

Renee :-)

Fix for Live Streaming on Dell Computer

I have a Dell Studio XPS computer and I like to record live streaming audio from the internet. After many hours of working on my computer's settings in my Roxio 10 program, I could not get streaming audio to record. No matter what I did, it would not work. What was more annoying was that I even upgraded my Roxio program to make sure that I could do this on my new computer (as I had been able to do on a previous version of Roxio on my previous Dell computer.)

After a Google search, I found that this feature has been DISABLED by DELL. I am really ticked off that Dell decided to do this without telling me they had disabled a feature of software that I paid for that has been disabled by Dell. After some additional research and trying some things that did not work on the Dell site, I found the solution for me and maybe it will help you.

You need to go to Radio Shack and buy 2 things. 1 (one) three foot 3.5 stereo 2 sided male audio cable and 1(one) 3.5 stereo Y-Cable (42-2570) I already had the 2 male end stereo cable that I use to plug my ipod into my car's audio system.

Plug one side of the 2 sided male audio cable into the BLUE line in jack. Bring the other end around to the front of the computer. You will need it soon.

Plug the male end of the Y-cable into the jack in the front of the computer. (The same one that you use to plug in your headphones into.)

Now take the other male end from 2 sided, three foot long audio cable and put it into one of the female ends of the Y-cable.

Finally, now you have one more female end of the Y-cable that you can plug your headphones into.

For those of you who need a picture, I have a drawing that I have posted to my website that I made to help illustrate for the right brains in cyberspace. http://www.rltphotoartist.com/Livestream_fix_for_Dell_Disabled_feature_for_Roxio.pdf

Disclaimer: I am a photographer not an engineer so this is the best I could come up with. I am so annoyed with Dell for disabling this feature that I wanted to help others who think they have lost their mind trying to make this work. There were a couple of ideas that were offered from other frustrated customers on the Dell site. But they didn't work. After a couple of hours, I found this solution that works. Hope it works for you.