I'm A Retouching Fool

So, what's Doug been up to lately? Well, when not out on the trails finding new homes for rocks, I've been holed up here in the house learning how to retouch some old photographs to remove unsightly blemishes. I'm not sure how it really came about, but I'm so glad it did as there are a few of my older photos I really wanted to clean up, such as this one of Lometa, Texas. I spent a lot of time here as a youngster and this is the only photo I possess of the place, before it started getting spruced up. I hated that the sky had all that gunk in it, but I just didn't have the tools or talent to fix it. But now, thanks to some happy accident, I found the proper tools and techniques in dear ol' Photoshop and I spent all last weekend playing around with them.


And here we have the finished product. What a difference, huh? I still have to work to get the brightness and contrast down to my liking, but this is a huge step. And so, with that little bag of tricks under my belt, I moved on to yet another favorite photo of mine -- my first airplane flight.


Now is this a candidate for retouching, or what? First and easiest of all, it had to be cropped to get all that dead space out of the foreground and sky. No problem there, But look at all the stains, spots, cracks and other crap going on. (You may have to click on the image to enlarge it enough to see them.) What a mess! So, I put on the coffee, loaded five CDs in the Home Theater System, and set to work. I fussed and fumed and just about broke my back bending over squinting at the computer screen (I have to get a big monitor someday!) and here's what came out FIVE HOURS later:


How's that? I still to go back every now and then just to look at the differences between the two and give myself a pat on the back. It's really an easy process to do, it just takes a long time sometimes, depending on the amount of damage involved. There are still a few things I'd like to learn how to do -- such as how to effectively remove staining -- but I'm very pleased with the results so far. It may have taken up an entire weekend learning the techniques and practicing on all those photos, but it was time well spent in my book. (Oh, and there was no way to remedy the tilt of the plane without causing me, the Ercoupe behind us, and all the buildings in the background to tilt to the left. It's the wind under the plane's right wing that's causing it.)