The eyes have it

Received a beautiful comment from an Indonesian blogger about last month's Balinese dancers.  So here's another item from the Tropenmuseum's Indonesian collection.  The portrait at right was taken in 1918.  Curators have selected it  for restoration as having special significance and sent over a 25 MB file; I'm not certain exactly why they chose it.  The metalwork on this woman's headgear is fascinating.

Today's post is about the importance of eyes.  Other aspects of an image offer more flexibility in restoration: although it wouldn't matter much if a few pixels altered a crease on her garment, human facial expressions convey a great deal of information.  The original image looks pretty good at thumbnail, but this is her right eye, unedited, at 200% resolution.

That's a vertical scratch from her eyebrow which passes down the left edge of her eye.  Then a second scratch curves with the lower edge of her eyelid and ends in a patch of corrosion, coupled with a second corrosion spot near the orbital bone at lower right.  The image also has several dust specks that are most noticeable as light marks on her eyebrow.  And if you look very carefully there's a series of faint horizontal scratches at the right edge of her eye.  Those horizontal scratches continue farther right in the image.

The goal is to correct all of this damage without altering her expression.  There's a hint of challenge to her face--not really hostile, but confident.  She looks like she's studying the photographer as intently as the camera studies her.

Beginners usually go for the largest areas of damage immediately.  It works better to begin with the small issues instead.

The smallest spots and scratches are out of the way now.  One needs to be careful with this and not go so far that the work damages skin tone.  Also, the shape of those knitted eyebrows forms part of her expression.  Our aim is realism rather than airbrushed perfection.  The next edit will work on that scratch at the lower eyelid.

This was the hardest part of the edit sequence because the scratch ran along the border between light and shadow.  A slight tension in the orbital muscle that surrounds the eye gives the expression its sense of challenge.  if the bright part of the lower eyelid comes out too wide, then that orbital muscle looks relaxed and the expression turns bland.  If the dark part of the lower eyelid gets too wide then the expression hardens into a scowl.  Working with the healing tool at a four pixel diameter setting managed a good balance between those extremes.

Here's the same closeup after the rest of the dirt and scratch removal is finished.  Haven't changed the histogram here; that will come later.  But the signs of photographic age don't distract from the look in her eye anymore.  Pulling back a bit, and viewing in the context of other unrestored areas of her face, have another look at the work in progress.

She would be about 110 years old if she were still alive today.  Perhaps the museum staff knows her name.

Making light of troubles

While Garrondo and I were discussing the Photoshop curves tool last night he asked me to blog this restoration as an example.  It depicts a pair of Balinese dancers and dates from 1929.  The photograph also has a lot of other distracting elements, so let's fast forward to the completed restoration and then concentrate on a few points.  Here's wishing the actual editing went so quickly; it actually took a day and a half.

The most difficult part of this restoration was not the obvious marks and streaks.  It was the tall flower on the right dancer's headdress.  The dust specks weren't so hard to remove; the problem was what to do with all that streaky low contrast bands which intersected it.  Compare it to another flower at far left: the unrestored versions appear so different that side by side, they hardly look like they both come from the same photograph.

Regardless of what caused the streaking (I've got several guesses), the first question was whether to correct for it.  So work began by getting rid of the spots specks, while leaving the streaks unaltered.  Sat back for a view of that version and decided the streaks really needed to go; they served no visible function other than distraction from the primary subjects.

The next phase of editing didn't try to create a totally even background.  I didn't want to alter much adjacent to the dancers themselves.  One of the few areas where background absolutely had to be patched near a costume element, though, was that darn flower.  Used the clone stamp at a low hardness setting to get a natural effect.  Afterward several brightness adjustment masks reduced the starkness of the differences between portions of the image.  Also enhanced contrast at the rose, which ultimately meant re-cloning the background in that area.

The final result on that flower might be a smidgeon too contrasty.  Yet considering what there was to work with, it was a pleasure to see it come this far.

Another aspect of this restoration was really gratifying at the end, although it's subtle enough that it's scarcely the first thing to catch anyone's eye.  In the original photograph the face on the dancer at right is slightly overexposed.

To see the difference a curves adjustment makes, here's a view of her as she looked after all the edits except for the curves adjustment had been completed.  There's a blandness and flatness about her; it's hard to catch her expression.

Now have a look at how the curves tool brings out the midtones.  Her face is still youthful but less like putty; more personality shows.  And the intricate contours of her headdress and shoulder band become more noticeable.

Restoration can be tedious work.  An image such as this one has so many obvious flaws that one runs the risk, out of exhaustion, of shortchanging the final adjustments.  I wish I knew the name of the somber young dancer in this photograph.  Those eyes look like she saw a lot of life at an early age.