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A Restoration from the Heart By Kaya Lovell with Andrea Sampson Sep 8, 2004, 22:54 |
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| Jan and John Senior in Frankfort, Germany |
Fifteen years ago, Jan and her husband, Major Sergeant John G. Davis were stationed at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Jan was working as the civilian x-ray tech at the Ramstein clinic. On October 14th, John had left their home in the village of Steinbach am Glam for the last time. He was taking their son, John-John to a friend’s house to spend the night. Thankfully, Jan had phoned their daughter and told her to remain at home, as she would be returning from work shortly.
On her way home from work, Jan had to pull over to let her friends in the Ramstein ambulance go around her, in a hurry to an accident scene. Little did she know that they were racing to her husband and son.
On their way to John-John’s friend’s house, the family Volkswagen had been hit by a German freight train. John Senior was 33, John-John was 11.
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| John-John, at 11 years old. |
Jan and her Daughter Melissa returned to the States alone on October 20th. The household goods, including all the photos, were sent home on a ship. The conditions were not optimal for photos, and almost every photo turned orange. The remaining photos are very precious to Jan and Melissa, and Jan yearned to see this photo of John-John at thirteen months of age restored. Below, Kaya will walk you step-by-step through the restoration process.
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| Unrestored Image |
Restoring photos is quite the breathtaking experience. Taking older images and bringing them up to look brand new is always quite the wonderful quest. Such was my experience when Jan asked us in Andrea and Clara’s crop one night. She asked if any of us could restore an image that had orange splotches on it. Always up for a challenge, I willingly volunteered.
Flash forward to the next morning. I open up the image to take a look at what I’ll be up against and, yes, she is right, it needs lots of work. So I jump and get cracking. Hey, Photoshop can pretty much restore anything right?! Now we are off and running at a full blown restoration.
1. First thing I do with the image is save the original file! Always work from a copy is my mantra. As you can see in the original shot, there are orange splotches.
2. Once I’ve got my copy and working from that, I select John-John and the little bench to be outlined. My goal is to blur the background enough that it’s not distracting and I don’t have to do unnecessary retouching.
3. I use my magnetic lasso tool to select him and once the selection is complete I invert the selection under Menu > Select > Inverse.
4. At that point I am free to filter the background using Menu > Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur at 2.8 pixels. I don’t want it too blurry, just enough to keep the viewer’s eyes off the background as a focal point.
5. Once the blurring is accomplished I go back to Menu > Select > Feather. I feather out at 5 pixels to prevent a harsh line between John-John and the background. To enhance that feathering I use my smudge tool in the toolbar and further smudge the line.
6. To fix the orange splotches, I use my cloning tool from the tool bar and get to work. I use the cloning tool from 12 pixels to 60 pixels.
7. Save the image at various stages!!! Nothing worse than having your computer cop an attitude because of the memory you are using and decide to freeze. If you save along the way, you have less to re-do in case of a crash. Please do this! Trust my words on this one!
8. Now that I’m done using the cloning tool I go into Menu > Image > Adjustments > Color Balance. I then add a wee bit more magenta to warm up the image from a cool, older photo look. I also take a bit of red to balance out the cyan in the image. It’s all a “keep a sharp eye for color” type approach.
9. I resize the image under Menu > Image > Resize and make it at a width of 8 inches. Once I did that I cropped the height to 10 inches for printing capability. Hit save, and we have restored a very valuable image.
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| Unrestored Face |
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| Restored Face |
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| Unrestored Hands |
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| Restored Hands |
It took time to get the orange splotches out of the image yet it was really worth the effort. I got to hear the story behind the image and young man, John-John, during the restoration process. I will honestly say, it is with great honor and privilege that I got to do this. Jan, my deepest condolences for this loss in Germany. You’ve got strength that God granted you and gave you a wonderful new family afterwards. Thank you for your sacrifices of time in Germany, being a military family during the Cold War, and sacrificing for country and honor. May you always be blessed for your love, time, and sacrifice.
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| Restored Photo |
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