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Random Cool Photo

The real crappy part about it was, I did everything in my power to let them get better positioning as we moved up and down the sidelines. To the point of telling people to jump in front of me a few times. I know there making their living, but ya, a few were over the top. The cool guy was a black dude likely a little older (mid 50's) then me. Nicest guy you could meet, and was actually trying to be helpful with tips and such. It is what it is.

Thanks to the staff here, I have my greatest Redskins fan memories. And, while they aren't looking for it, there's no way can really repay them for that.
 
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My first shot with the new camera. Straight out of the box in full auto with no image adjustments. I think I might like this!
 
We hosted the family Xmas Party on the weekend and I took this.

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Considering he doesn't like people, he was surprising well behaved.
 
Here's the latest... D Day, soldiers being helped from a life boat after their landing craft sank.

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Yet today, the world is full of soft-**** wannabe's who are too politically correct to even do an ounce of what they did back then.
 
Time to call this holiday colorized..... so, until next year.

"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night !"

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The mtn range is named 'Sleeping Lady'. Average Alaskan sunset in January.
 
So anyhow, my holidays we're screwed up a bit and I had lots of time on my hands. Ya know what happens when I have time on my hands...... my favorite stress reliever.

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Like I said, I had lots of time... and stress :)
 
Pete, what kind of shape is your source material to begin with?

I assume you get down to single pixel for some of these.

Pretty work.
 
Pete, what kind of shape is your source material to begin with?

I assume you get down to single pixel for some of these.

Pretty work.

Hit and miss to be honest. The library of congress, which is where I get most of the photos has a lot of high res stuff, and most of the stuff I post has to be sized down drastically to fit here. I do get down to the pixel here and there, but you can only get so close unless you use software to split pixels, of work as a vector. I can normally get the desired effect as a JPG, but have at times had to work with vector to fix badly damaged stuff.

You can see the difference if you go through my galleries, and also a change in my skill level. I've gotten a lot better with skin tones, which I avoided a lot in my early days of colorizing. Time has been a good learning experience, and I've developed a few techniques nobody else seems to be using on some areas. I have the best gold leaf out of anybody doing colorizations. Unfortunately, you have to do lots of classy antique vehicles to find gold leaf. I also use it for brass parts.

I spend a lot of time researching the photos to get them as close as I can, but a lot comes down to interpreting the photos gray tones to determine which color something should actually be..
 
Geez, don't think I ever got into splitting pixels but I dinked around with video editing and some photo stuff back in the late 90's. The coolest stuff I did was using captures from D8 video I took during friend's weddings and events. At '30' frames per sec you can get the occasional medium quality action stills that are hard to come by with regular cameras.
Also went through family 16mm, 8mm and Super 8mm film back then to put to vhs via PC, now I'm occasionally re-doing the same stuff to DVD.

But none looks like your work. I tend to use clone, smudge, airbrush despeckle and the like to do my 'touchups' :)
 
But none looks like your work. I tend to use clone, smudge, airbrush despeckle and the like to do my 'touchups' :)

Thanks for the kind words Tom.

That's the latest craze actually. Taking still from high res video. There was the whole uproar with the cover photo of Megan Fox where the photographer just had her go move around in front of the camera, and then pulled the perfect frame.

I do a lot of the same when repairing / touching up. The photo of the Packard limo in front of the brick building is a good example. The original was missing a big chunk on the top right, and another torn section on the bottom right. I just highlight a good area, copy and paste it as a new layer. Stretch or skew it to get the fit right, and blend it in by using the eraser set on fuzzy. I always copy more then I need to replace a missing area so I can really fade the edges to fit the original. Adjust the lighting to match, and merge the pasted section. For whatever reason, the right half was overexposed, so once I did the repairs, I copied the entire half and adjusted the lighting. Fuzzy erased to blend the edges, and merged it. Even on the original high res photo, you'd have to really strain to find the blended area.

Something I found helps when cleaning up the B&W's. I do 90% of this work with the lowest form of photoshop, Elements. Under the enhance tab I got to adj lighting, then shadows and highlights. More often then not, the old photos are faded or over exposed, so I set the shadow brightness to zero or one. Then I darken the highlights very slightly as it grays out the photo easily. The biggie is mid tone contrast. It brings out the detail differently then just adjusting the contrast. You can also adjust multiple light levels. I do actually have a program that will split the pixels, but have really never needed to.

Just play a bit. I never had any formal instruction doing this stuff. In the digital world, you never have to worry about loosing the original. What I found while involved with a facebook group is most people over process the photos. The over use the automated tools the software give you, like removing noise, sharp mask, and remove dust and scratches. I try to do as little repair as I can. I don't want my stuff to look like a color photo just taken. I try for a natural look, as if the photo was taken in color 100 years ago. If you went out today and shot with a 100 years old glass plate set up, and then the exact shot with a modern film camera, the difference would evident. The folks, barring a few, try to make the photo look like a new photo, and much if it looks like crap. There were a few cats that were very good, and at least one I will say has it up on me. I left the group being it started as a place for people who colorize to discuss and trade techniques. Then the guy who started the group, without even asking the group, made the group public, and stated that anybody that wanted a photo repaired or colorized could post it and one of the others would do it for free. In all the time I've been doing this, I haven't made enough to go out for a night, but I sure as hell aint going to be told I can't charge for my work when somebody asks me to do a repair / colorization. It would only take a few minutes for people to realize who to ask when they looked at the work posted. There was 3 or 4 of us. Don't know if others bailed out, but I'm guessing the guy who I class myself just under didn't hang around.

Sorry, I do tend to get long winded when discussing this stuff.
 
Thanks for the kind words Tom.

That's the latest craze actually. Taking still from high res video. There was the whole uproar with the cover photo of Megan Fox where the photographer just had her go move around in front of the camera, and then pulled the perfect frame.

This is coming and threatens what I do. Right now I am in a similar predicament, 3D cameras are the new craze in my industry, still too expensive for everyday use, but if I want to stay out in front...I need to get one. I still have a much higher quality still image, but it's the perspective agents/clients want.
 

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