Calling Photoshop gurus!

entropy

Alright, I took this picture for photography. Then, what we did was put rubber cement on everything EXCEPT the parts that are now brown. If you put it in bleach, and then in a special kind of toner, it turns it brown (can be used for drawing attention, antique-look, etc). Now. Because I'm apparently half-retarded with the rubber cement, there's all sorts of brown spots that, well, shouldn't be. There's nothing anymore that I can do for the physical photo itself, but that's where the magic of digital comes in!

I put a lot of my stuff on my DeviantART account (if anyone wants to check out what I've got ... I'm ALWAYS open to comments, criticisms, or tips!:D[/shameless-self-plug:D]) and I want this to look good. I tried selecting, inverse-selecting, and some other stuff I had no idea what they were for. Any ideas?

edit: there won't be much I can do about that big ol' scratch in the middle. I forget what I did, but it was most definitely something stupid

This is at 50%, just so you can see what it looks like:

Garg

So, what exactly was it that you needed help on? Was it turning the outside of the photo (around clock) brown? I think there's a filter somewhere that can sepia-tone an image. You could apply it just a selected area, or if necessary, do it to the whole image and paste the original clock back onto the sepia-image.

But, you'd have to clear up those spots first, or they'd just be a darker brown. I'm not very good at re-touching large spots, but I would think that using a spraycan-like brush with several different colors selected from the background might work.

I'll let you know if I find the filter. Somebody will probably beat me to it though, since I'm probably going to be busy at work for another few hours

Let me know if I'm off-base with what it was you were wanting.

BlackHawk

I understood jack of what you just said. You want to remove the marks on the wall?

entropy

I want to keep the WOODEN CLOCK PARTS brown, and turn everything else to greyscale. If you notice, it isn't really greyscale. It's got a greenish tint, which my scanner does for some stupid reason. After I get everything BESIDES the clock edges to greyscale, I can tweak it myself. I just need to know how to select everything *other than x portion*. This is not JUST for this, but also for future reference. Better?

Thrax

Mask the wood part, then desaturate the image.

entropy

Weee! Two terms I don't know, all in one sentence! Actually, I think I know how to mask it (using the red/pinkish thing, right?) but what then?

Thrax

Yeah, masking is the red/pink thing.

Image -> Adjust -> Desaturate

Garg

This achieves the same thing as masking, but here's a technique that might come in handy:

Use the polygonal select tool to select easily-managable parts of the clock when it's zoomed in a bit. Hold down shift to make another selection that will add to the previous selection. Use undo if you mess up. After you've got the whole clock surrounded by a selection, tell it to invert selection. Now any changes you do will only affect the area around the clock.

Lord_Night

entropy wrote:

Now. Because I'm apparently half-retarded with the rubber cement,

Ok first off The Rubber cement is for the picture... QUIT sniffing it...

I know what you are trying to do and the one Thrax says will work nice,
as long as you keep the clock out of the part.
also Gargoyles will work, a bit more work involved but a nice effect.
I copied th pic and am in Photoshop CS with it now messing around seeign what I can do with it.. if it turns out to look like anything I will post it..

Thrax

Proof of concept.

Lord_Night

Very very nice Thrax

woot

entropy

Very nice indeed. Exactly the effect I was going for. Thanks for the tips guys! As soon as I get some time tonight, I'll futz with it and upload it again. Thanks again!

entropy

Well, seeing as how I was pretty bored tonight, and didn't feel like finishing my Alg2 project, I played around with this. Came up with this, which is infintely better than the original. If you look enough, it's probably pretty easy to see patches of wall that don't blend all that well, as I used the Clone Stamp tool, and not the Healing Brush or Patch Tool (can't remember which blends things nicely).

Thrax: How'd you get the wood darker? Playing with levels got an effect somewhat like that, but also took a lot of the grays out of the wall. I think somewhere between the brown I have now, and what you did would be even better...

Thrax

I used the masking tool at 100% opacity and carefully masked off all the wood in about 400% zoom and made it into an independent selection. Then I could adjust the hue, brightness, and contrast of the wood without affecting the rest of the image.

I then inverted the selection and ran a bit of gaussian blur on the background to smooth out the granulation in the glass and the wall.

Straight_Man

You can do that, or smooth the background wall part, or simply force it to 8-bit and copy the clock back on, then convert the face and the pendulum Window to grayscale.

Actually, for the color noise on the wood, I would use Paint Shop Pro 9's noise reduction filters, but.....

Nomad

... Why would you make an 8-bit copy?

Thrax

The conversion to grayscale is implicit. That's the desaturation step I cited previously in the thread.

spazz

This thread is most likely dead, but without spending a lot of time on it here's my take on the clock repair.