I think it's a good idea!

I am an admin at a large design forum and recently someone posted a torn picture they had to fix for a photoshop class (sheesh, kids these days...!). I didn't have a go myself but I was amazed at how easy some people made it look.

Before and one of the after attempts.

Here's the thread, you don't have to be registered or anything to view it.

Very cool, By far I am not experienced enough to do anything THIS dramatic.

So does anyone have any crappy pictures to fix?

I am assuming that in the orginal post, you just wanted to fix a picture for colour and saturation and sharpness

I'm in! I'd love to become more skilled at fixing the stuff Rannie mentions above...not to mention tone adjustment for pictures with big shadows / blown-out highlights.

What we should really do is have everyone take a crack at it before seeing what everyone else's attempt is :).

It could be interesting from a "what do you think a "good" picture" is standpoint, as I'm sure everyone has a different view...

I was amazed by the ripped photo repair, wow!

I'm a surreptitious photographer, so my photos tend to start out in pretty bad shape. My biggest problem is low exposure. (I know, I know, keep a better eye on the sun!)

I'm including an example - and yeah, it's awful, but I love the image (an elderly woman) and would love to see if anyone can bring it back to some kind of limping life.

http://www.quirkynomads.com/badphoto.jpg (I can provide a larger version if needed.)

And here's a more realistic bad photo - (the file size is huge, sorry, but won't take too long on a fast connection) - lots of things wrong with it. I did try my best, but I wasn't happy with the results.

Here's the original: http://www.quirkynomads.com/eatoncentre.tiff

And here's my version: http://www.quirkynomads.com/folderblog/photos/140805px.jpg

I'd love to see what y'all can do with it.

I couldn't download either of your examples. Would you kindly email them to me?

Thanks,

Chris

Sounds like fun... count me in.

I assume, however, when you said "Photoshop" you meant "and/or The Gimp"? Its all I use with my 10D (once I convert the shot from Raw to Tiff using the Canon software).

And do we expect people to keep track of the exact changes they made? Or just show off the final result? How about cropping? If we start with a big picture the key may be removing elements or re-composing the shot somewhat.

Oh, totally - the Gimp too (and whatever other photo software there is) - I'd appreciate some kind of summary of the changes but it doesn't have to be a meticulous step by step.

Cropping is completely fine.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results!

Rannie, can we have an album on TAP to display the results?

I started up a photo album called Photoshopped

http://toronto.photobloggers.org/blog/Photoblog/Photoshopped

Feel free to post an images here that you would like to see fixed up.

Does the GIMP allow you to edit TIFFs which contain more than 8-bit data? I didn't think it did....

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I dont think that trying to fix a digital file like this one is as good of a challange as fixing up an old torn, ratty photo. Maybe something with tear marks, scuffs, bad edges?
applying a few color correcting techniques will fix this photo, but it takes time to fix a photo that has been physically damaged and scanned in.

Yes it is true, fixing a damged photo is much more of a challenge than fixing a digital file, however, I don't think that many photobloggers really know how to do this, aside from the fact that it's not very often that we would need to resort to fixing a damaged photo. Really far to advance for most people here.

In the original posting, the idea was being able to see how people improved and fixed their digital files for posting, which is more topical to photoblogging. Theire are so many different ways and different steps to fixing or improving your shots, and a step by step look at the would be very educational for folks that are less skilled.

Here's a Before:

http://toronto.photobloggers.org/blog/_archives/2005/2/16/326761.html

and an After:

http://toronto.photobloggers.org/blog/_archives/2005/2/16/326767.html

I detailed what I did to the photo, step by step, and also provided a link to the original so if anyone else wants to give it a try they can.