Something Spiffy

OK, a decent Photoshop person could do this with their eyes closed, but I've been learning this stuff slowly as I need the various tricks and tips.

This is a photo of Don C. when he was in the Navy in the mid 1950s. I've always loved it. I never saw him with a handlebar mustache in my life, so this picture would always grab my attention for a minute when I passed by it.

When we went to Louisiana after Christmas and I used our flatbed scanner to scan as many old family photos as I could, this was one Big Sis had handy. It was one that Don C.'s mother, my Mamaw Eunice had in her house. She had cut the photo into a rough oval to put into an oval picture frame. Of course I had to remove it to scan it. I've posted it before as it appears in the first form below, but I'm posting it again to show the difference. Click on the photos to enlarge.


I took the scan and burned in the edges with Photoshop Elements, creating a vignette effect.

Here's the result. Like I said, spiffy.



Also, I worked on a photo of Don C.'s mother, whom we called Mamaw Eunice, as a little girl. I had spent a little time on the photo part, but the outer "framing" of the blue and gray surround were dirty and had spots from the years. She was born in 1913 I believe, so this photo was taken around 1917 or 1918.

Here's the original, after I had cleaned up the photograph part only. The photograph part still needs work, but it's much better than it was, believe me.


Here's the photo after I also cleaned up the surrounding part as well. Makes the whole thing look much much better not having the spots and stains of ninety-something years of people handling it.


The one of my Dad in his Navy uniform (and handlebar mustache) was easy. The vignetting effects is easily done, and I have a good book that shows how to do it step by step. Literally 10 minutes of work.

The cleanup on the surfaces surrounding my grandmother's childhood photo on the other hand took several hours. There might be easier ways to do it, but I just enlarged it to mammoth proportions and worked on it tiny section by tiny section and eventually had "cleaned" off most of the spots. Good enough anyway. Now I can go back as I have time and learn new things to try to improve the photograph part even more in the future.

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EXTRA STUFF, IF ANYONE CARES.

In the early eighties I took a photograph of the above photograph of my grandmother and developed it in a school darkroom. This was before anyone could have imagined the advance of digital technology we enjoy today. I scanned and posted that twenty something year old "copy" I made in the early days of my blog (bottom of post), HERE.

But when we went to Louisiana and I scanned what photos I had time to scan, I was able to scan the original. And with software like Photoshop Elements, it's like having your dream darkroom to work in.

Weird how stuff comes back around again.

I'm posting this early and going to bed.