SEGUNDA MEJORA

Copy photographs like the one in Figure 5-29a usually have poor tone separation (you’ll also see that in a very severely faded photograph). Ignoring the matter of repairing the physical damage, what will most improve this photograph? The histogram in Figure 5-30 shows that the print lacks good whites and blacks. Looking at the print itself, it’s very clear that tonal separation is weak in both the highlights and the shadows.

The curve in Figure 5-31 is the most straightforward fi x. I’ve pulled in the white and black points so that the photograph has some true whites and blacks. Then I added control points that gave the curve a reverse-S shape that increased contrast in the highlights and shadows in exchange for some midtone contrast. That produced Figure 5-29b , which is much improved over the original.

Fig. 5-29 There are several ways to improve a copy photograph, like the one in (a). You can use Curves (b), the Shadows/Highlight tool (c), or a combination of the two (d). My personal favorite is (d), but they’re all good.

Still , I wouldn’t mind opening up the shadows more and restoring some of the lost midtone contrast. That’s a job for the Shadow/Highlight adjustment. There are ways in which I like that a lot better, but overall the photograph now feels “ busy ” to me; it has lost too much visual focus. Maybe I did too good a job of equalizing contrast over the entire tonal range.

How to improve a copy print with the Shadow/Highlight adjustment

Copy prints frequently have poor contrast in the highlights and shadows, which makes Photoshop’s Shadow/Highlight adjustment a good choice to revive them ( Figure 5-32 ). Because the shadows in Figure 5-29a needed only a modest boost, I throttled back the shadow amount to 20%. Then I added a 6% highlight amount to keep them from getting blown out. Last I increased the midtone contrast by a substantial 28 points to give the photograph some real snap. That gets me Figure 5-29c, a big improvement.

ContrastMaster , the Photoshop plug-in I reviewed in Chapter 3, “ Software for Restoration, ” seems like a logical tool to try on this photograph. After all, the big problem with copy prints is that they look fl at and lifeless; the tonal nuances of the original get lost in the copy process. As you can see in Figure 5-36 , it did a pretty good job on this print.

How to improve a copy print with ContrastMaster

This plug-in is good at bringing out local tonality and contrast, and that’s where copy prints fall fl at (literally). Figure 5-35 shows the control panel settings I used to get the result you see in Figure 5-36 . I left the individual settings for the three different contrast effects (Dynamic, Adaptive, and Local) at their default values. I played around with the mix until I got a result that looked pleasing. Not too surprisingly, there is only a little bit of Dynamic adjustment in there; overall, the contrast and tonal placement within the photograph isn’t too bad. The Adaptive and Local contrast Fig. 5-31 This Curves adjustment produced

Figure 5-29b . I pulled in the endpoints of the curve to make the blacks blacker and the whites whiter, increasing the overall contrast of the photograph. The two other control points on the curve increase the contrast of the highlight and shadow detail at the same time that they bring the midrange contrast back to normal. This curve adds a lot of tonal separation to the highlights and shadows without making the print look too harsh overall.

Fig. 5-30 This is the histogram for Figure 5-29a . The blacks should be a little darker, and there’s a very pronounced lack of bright highlight detail.

changes do a lot more to bring out textures and subtle tonal differences, and that’s what most needed improvement, so my mix favored them.

The direct effect of this control panel was way too strong, so I adjusted the Fade slider to reduce the strength by 60%. I could also make such a change by leaving the plug-in at full strength and using the Edit/Edit/Fade … control in Photoshop to reduce the strength of the plug-in.

Not so incidentally, a more fl exible and less destructive approach would be to copy the photograph into a new layer, apply the plug-in to that layer, and use the Blend slider in that layer to mix in the amount of the plug-in’s alterations that I wanted. This would avoid irrevocably changing the original and preserve the option of changing the strength of ContrastMaster’s effect later.

Finally , I tried a mixed tack for equalizing contrast. Starting with the original, I applied the curves from Figure 5-33 . This is just a straight overall contrast increase; I pulled in the white and black points to increase the density range in the photograph, but I didn’t reshape the curve to alter the relative contrast of the highlights, midtones, and shadows. Then I applied the Shadow/Highlight adjustment shown in Figure 5-34 . This opened up the shadows and toned down highlights just a little bit. Since I hadn’t fl attened out the midtones with the curves, I didn’t need to increase their contrast very much. The result is Figure 5-29d . Personally, this is my favorite of the versions. There’s room for further refi nement, but for many clients you could stop right here; this is a good-looking photograph.

Why did I bother including the other three versions here if this is the one I like best? Because they’re all good; they merely appeal to different tastes. This harks back to points I made in Chapter 1: First, good restoration is about art and aesthetics, about constructing the image that looks like a good photograph to you, not just mechanically correcting errors. Second, there’s value in playing around. Trying out different settings and controls to see

Fig. 5-32 This Shadow/Highlight adjustment produced Figure 5-29c . The overall tonality is not a lot different, but there’s a better sense of separation and detail throughout the tonal range, even in the midtones. Note the hefty boost to Midtone Contrast ( 28 points) in the control settings; that’s what keeps the snap in the midtones.

Fig. 5-33 I applied this Curves adjustment to Figure 5-29a as the fi rst stage in producing Figure 5-29d . This curve causes a modest contrast increase and makes the blacks a little darker and the highlights a little whiter.

Fig. 5-34 This Shadow/Highlight adjustment takes the photograph that resulted from the Curves adjustments made by Figure 5-33 and yields Figure 5-29d . Notice that there’s only a slight Midtone Contrast increase; that’s because the previous Curves adjustment took care of most of the overall contrast change needed. The Shadow/Highlight adjustment kicks up the detail in the highlights and shadows just enough to make the resulting photograph look like an original print instead of a copy print.

Fig. 5-35 ContrastMaster’s elaborate controls will take time to master, but it’s worth the trouble.

what they get you is the best way to get to the photograph you really like. Single-mindedness is not a virtue.