Editing/enhancing a picture using photoshop

DAY #1

STEP 1: I was first instructed to use Photoshop elements 5.0 because it was the best program that would be suitable for restoring an old photo to new by using the "editing/enhancing" option. 

We were given the task of restoring  the above photo through the process of removing the white cracks, folds and tears that you see everywhere

STEP 3 : To start, I was directed to first select the rubber stamp tool in order to undo the wear-and-tear in the photo. The task started with me finding an area in the photo to start with, I chose to start with the sky and clouds and immediately zoomed upon that area (the top-left area in particular). The process of removing the blemishes in the aged photo involved me simultaneously holding down the "alt" key and clicking on a specific area within the larger area that was of the same shade and texture of the area surrounding the tear. What I found challenging about this process was the fact that there were an abundance of different shades of grey present in the clouds so I had to be extremely precise when selecting the pixel that would make the best cover-up layer.

STEP #4: After about half an hour I was able to remove the remaining crevices in the sky and on both boys' shirts, which I found to generally be a relatively easy task, although equally time-consuming. The part of the photo I was to shift my attention to now was the gravel occupying the bottom half of the photograph. The difficult task of restoring this part of the photo lied in the fact that gravel was a difficult terrain to retouch and still make believable because of the various changes in shade and texture. Therefore in order to make the picture appear to be genuine, I had to select several different pixels to add layers rather than just one area.

 At a bit over an hour I was able to fully restore the bottom third of the photo and was simply left with the almost unnoticable deatails of the photo to revitalize. Particularily the small tear you see on the bottom pant leg of the boy in the black shirt. For this task I just had to make sure that I zoomed into the area to the max. 

DAY #2

 After roughly 15 minutes I was finished all the retouching that was left in the picture which was a generally easy job to do. Overall, I was generally impressed with the result of my work on this photo, as it was my first time ever retouching an aged photo and I had already become accostomed to the process. The only section of the photo that I was not pleased with was my retouching of the foreground (grass); the patterns appeared slightly repetitive due to the fact that I didn't use a wide range of pixels with the stamp tool to create a layer.