Photo-Restoration

If you've ever tried your hand at some photo-restoration, you'll know it can be a very long, sometimes frustrating ordeal. There are times when it's not so much the difficulty of the work, but the sheer tediousness of it. I'm currently working on a restoration which I can't show here yet as I don't have the necessary permission. It's for photorescuejapan.org, and they reached out via linkedin.com to ask for volunteer retouchers to restore photos that were badly damaged in the massive earthquake and tsunami earlier this year. After I'd filled in the appropriate paperwork and releases, they sent me a photo that, to be honest, was a bit of a nightmare. As soon as I get permission, I'll post that image and tell you all about it.
For now, I"ll tell you a little about the image above. In the big scheme of things, this one really wasn't all that bad to work on. I only used 2 tools for this, the Clone Stamp Tool and the Healing Brush Tool.
Going back and forth between the 2 worked very well for me. As you can see, most of the work involved repairing the cracks that ran through the photo and some rebuilding of the right side of the face, especially the eye. With a lot of blending and cloning, I eventually got things looking they way that I wanted them to. And when I say eventually, I mean after about 3 hours. This kind of work is not for everyone, but if you've got a good amount of patience and can look forward to the end result, you should give this a try.
And don't forget to put your retouching on a separate layer above the original. Also, set the layer to 'Current and Below' in the information bar across the top of Photoshop. This way, you're doing no damage whatsoever to the original layer. And save, save, save as you go.
One last thing, if photo-restoration is your thing, or you want to give it a go, contact photorescuejapan.org and see if you can help out with letting people get back photos of loved ones.
Peace

Changing eye color in Photoshop

So here is a real easy and effective way to change eye color on a shot, from brown to blue.
1. Switch to 'Quick Mask' mode - press the 'Q' button
2. With a soft bush, paint the area you'd like to select
3. Hit the 'Q' button to escape quick mask mode
4. From your adjustment layers panel, open 'Selective Color' and choose Neutral from the drop down window
5. Lower the sliders on magenta and yellow
6. Make a selection from the previous adjustment layer
7. Go to Hue/Saturation and select 'Cyans' from the drop down window and adjust to your liking
8. You are done

There are other ways to do this, as with everything in PS. This is just one way. If this doesn't work for you, try using curves to lower the reds and yellows, or try channel mixer, or color balance. There's a dozen different methods for this. Try to work out which one is best for you.

Making 'Actions'

For those of you just starting out in Photoshop, a couple of tips before you get going. When you first open an image, please please please try working in a non-destructive manner. By that, I mean making a duplicate of your original 'background' layer. Command 'J' does this. And use your adjustment layers, they let you go back and tweak them individually rather than continually adding new layers. And don't forget to group your work in 'Folders', command 'G' will put a set of layers in to a particular folder that you can then re-name however you see fit. It's just a good way to keep organized if you go back to an image after a couple of weeks, or months.
One of the first things I did with PS was to learn all the keyboard shortcuts and how to make actions. If you work in a way that you are consistently using the same menu items over and over, simply make an action for it. For example, if you always convert an image to CMYK, follow these steps:
1. Go to the 'Actions' palette, click on 'Button Mode'
2. Return to that same drop down window and click on 'New Action'
3. Enter the name of the action ie: CMYK
4. You have the option of entering a function key and a color for this action
5. Hit 'Record'
6. Go back to the drop down window in the 'Actions' palette and click on 'Insert Menu Item'
7. A dialog box will come up that says 'menu item' and 'none selected'. Ignore this!
8. Go to 'Image', 'Mode', 'CMYK Color', Then click OK in that dialog box
9. Return to drop down window in 'Actions' palette and click on 'Stop Recording'.
10. In drop down window, click on 'Button Mode', and your action will be there, probably at the bottom.

I know this may seem like a lot of steps, but it will probably only take a minute or 2 to do this, and it will save you so much time.
Let me know if this helped at all and happy Photoshopping.
David