Restoration & Enhancement AS AN ART Personally, I hate the word "retouching." In the old days they used to take the final print and cover over imperfections with a grease pencil. But that was about as subtle as a pit bull -- the technique didn't just correct and compensate, it obliterated and destroyed. Portraits particularly tended to look plastic and flat and featureless. Enter Photoshop and a whole host of plug-ins that make repairing photographs - and then making them look fantastic - fun. It's almost magical. The side-by-side examples below will give you an idea of how dramatically different, but undetectably altered, today's photos can be. I prefer to call it "ENhancing" because the Photoshop versions don't just correct, they actually improve what the camera saw: balancing tones, erasing shadows, bringing out detail and exposing a color range that would otherwise be lost. And then, art can happen....

Street Scene: Fifth Avenue in Spring. On the left, the image has no focus. On the right, it's very much about the Abercrombie & Fitch billboard.
Theatrical Portraits: this image of playwright PJ Gibson was shot under less than optimal condictions and was seriously over-saturated. Restoring the beauty underneath took only a few adjustments. Then the image was selectively lightened and darkened for emphasis, hair was filled in and the whole thing was sharpened. Notice the difference in her hair and jewelry, not to mention her eyes. The image was delivered to me as a digital file - it is always best to work from a digital file; however, it is possible to achieve very good results by scanning a hard copy (print, snapshot), even a damaged one. (See the "Last Supper" below.) When it came time to make an image for PJ to hang on her wall, she said, "...something really dramatic...." So the poster version, below, (rendered as a characterature artistic sketch) is printed at nearly five feet wide to custom fit the space.
Architecture: the panel above is a relief sculpture on one of the Rockefeller Center buildings across from St. Patrick's Cathedral - the warrior figure being literally larger than life. It's backlighted, but time and dulling exposure to the elements made it pretty drab and easy to ignore. Photoshop restored it to something very near its original vibrancy.
The Tribute in Light, 2006: The sight from my terrace took my breath away. But it was frustrating to capture because photographing under low light conditions is always tough. And, in this case, the light source is almost exactly four miles away. The camera did its best, but Photshop allowed me to coax out all the subtlety of the interplay of light in the clouds. Finally, it was re-cropped and straightened. The image on the right is exactly what my eyes saw.

This image was a little flat, needed to be brightened a bit...cleaned up...and, oh yeah, I replaced the burned out bulb in the second lamp post.
These are from my "Day at the Museum" series in which I photographed people experiencing art at various city museums. Notice how just playing with the lighting elevates the whole image. (The one above is called "Is That All?" and the one below I named "Is that...?")
Church interior. Lighting meant a really mushy image...until application of selective brightening and sharpening and playing.
This image is a scan of a photo that was about ten-years-old, taken as goof on the set of the HBO series OZ. Physically, it was about a 4" x 6" snapshot that had faded severly and suffered all the scratches and dings and damages that happen to old photos. I was asked to 'clean it up' and 'blow it up' as best I could so that it could be framed and displayed.

I "healed" the blemishes, repaired the nicks and breaks, brightened everything and gave it more contrast, etc. At this point it was 23" x 13" print. But then, I just had to play.....
Since they were spoofing DaVinci's "Last Supper" with the pose, I decided to take it a little over the top by borrowing the background from the original fresco - with apologies to both Leonardo and the cast of the TV series. The purose is to show how extreme an enhancement can be...and to illustrate a technique I'm currently experimenting with: combining painterly images and photo-realistic images in the same space. It is possible now (obviously) to composite the two in a flat print. It is also possible to create "paintings" in a two-dimensional workspace (utilizing a combination of Photoshop and an additional program like Painter X) and then print them onto canvas so that the final looks like a traditional painting, "as if" three-dimensional. The question is, is it possible to render an image "as if" both two-and-three-dimensional? Stay tuned.
From Enhancement To Art....
Actress and Poet, Josephine McFadden is a beautiful woman who photographs very well. And...
The better the original photograph, the better the emhanced portrait. So that sometimes....
...ART just has to happen! This is an example of photo/realism rendered with painterly techniques, painted on canvas...portraits have come full circle. Cultivating a photograph into a painting is tricky and time-consuming...but if you have aspecial photo that calls out for an expensive frame and a spotlight on the wall, this is the way to go............
Back to the H2G photos home page.
Or, back to the Headshot web site.

Restoration & Enhancement AS AN ART

Personally, I hate the word "retouching." In the old days they used to take the final print and cover over imperfections with a grease pencil. But that was about as subtle as a pit bull -- the technique didn't just correct and compensate, it obliterated and destroyed. Portraits particularly tended to look plastic and flat and featureless.

Enter Photoshop and a whole host of plug-ins that make repairing photographs - and then making them look fantastic - fun. It's almost magical.

The side-by-side examples below will give you an idea of how dramatically different, but undetectably altered, today's photos can be. I prefer to call it "ENhancing" because the Photoshop versions don't just correct, they actually improve what the camera saw: balancing tones, erasing shadows, bringing out detail and exposing a color range that would otherwise be lost. And then, art can happen....

Street Scene: Fifth Avenue in Spring. On the left, the image has no focus. On the right, it's very much about the Abercrombie & Fitch billboard.

Theatrical Portraits: this image of playwright PJ Gibson was shot under less than optimal condictions and was seriously over-saturated. Restoring the beauty underneath took only a few adjustments. Then the image was selectively lightened and darkened for emphasis, hair was filled in and the whole thing was sharpened. Notice the difference in her hair and jewelry, not to mention her eyes. The image was delivered to me as a digital file - it is always best to work from a digital file; however, it is possible to achieve very good results by scanning a hard copy (print, snapshot), even a damaged one. (See the "Last Supper" below.)

When it came time to make an image for PJ to hang on her wall, she said, "...something really dramatic...."
So the poster version, below, (rendered as a characterature artistic sketch) is printed at nearly five feet wide to custom fit the space.

Architecture: the panel above is a relief sculpture on one of the Rockefeller Center buildings across from St. Patrick's Cathedral - the warrior figure being literally larger than life. It's backlighted, but time and dulling exposure to the elements made it pretty drab and easy to ignore. Photoshop restored it to something very near its original vibrancy.

The Tribute in Light, 2006: The sight from my terrace took my breath away. But it was frustrating to capture because photographing under low light conditions is always tough. And, in this case, the light source is almost exactly four miles away. The camera did its best, but Photshop allowed me to coax out all the subtlety of the interplay of light in the clouds. Finally, it was re-cropped and straightened. The image on the right is exactly what my eyes saw.

This image was a little flat, needed to be brightened a bit...cleaned up...and, oh yeah, I replaced the burned out bulb in the second lamp post.

These are from my "Day at the Museum" series in which I photographed people experiencing art at various city museums. Notice how just playing with the lighting elevates the whole image. (The one above is called "Is That All?" and the one below I named "Is that...?")

Church interior. Lighting meant a really mushy image...until application of selective brightening and sharpening and playing.

This image is a scan of a photo that was about ten-years-old, taken as goof on the set of the HBO series OZ. Physically, it was about a 4" x 6" snapshot that had faded severly and suffered all the scratches and dings and damages that happen to old photos. I was asked to 'clean it up' and 'blow it up' as best I could so that it could be framed and displayed.

I "healed" the blemishes, repaired the nicks and breaks, brightened everything and gave it more contrast, etc. At this point it was 23" x 13" print. But then, I just had to play.....

Since they were spoofing DaVinci's "Last Supper" with the pose, I decided to take it a little over the top by borrowing the background from the original fresco - with apologies to both Leonardo and the cast of the TV series. The purose is to show how extreme an enhancement can be...and to illustrate a technique I'm currently experimenting with: combining painterly images and photo-realistic images in the same space. It is possible now (obviously) to composite the two in a flat print. It is also possible to create "paintings" in a two-dimensional workspace (utilizing a combination of Photoshop and an additional program like Painter X) and then print them onto canvas so that the final looks like a traditional painting, "as if" three-dimensional. The question is, is it possible to render an image "as if" both two-and-three-dimensional? Stay tuned.

From Enhancement To Art....

Actress and Poet, Josephine McFadden is a beautiful woman who photographs very well.
And...

The better the original photograph, the better the emhanced portrait.

So that sometimes....

...ART just has to happen!

This is an example of photo/realism rendered with painterly techniques, painted on canvas...portraits have come full circle. Cultivating a photograph into a painting is tricky and time-consuming...but if you have aspecial photo that calls out for an expensive frame and a spotlight on the wall, this is the way to go............

Back to the H2G photos home page.

Or, back to the Headshot web site.