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This is why Photoshop is awesome

This is a picture of my Poppy McLean. I don't know how old this photo is, but I'd guess he's in his mid-twenties. That's a head of hair I never saw in my life. He was all bald and Ziggy-like long before I was born (and you can see a hint of that just starting in the photo). We borrowed this picture from my parents for a little project we're going to be working on (more on that later) and as you can see it wasn't in the best of shape. Rather than hanging on the wall or putting it up on the fireplace mantle, I think someone held it in their balled-up fist for the past sixty years. But then Photoshop came along and smeared awesome all over it. Scroll down to see the cleaned up picture.

It wasn't push-button easy, but considering how frigged up the original was I definitely classify this clean up as Not Hard. It basically involved copying non-damaged, similar-looking parts of the photo and painting them overtop damaged parts (working at about 300x zoom). This took about three hours all told, but the time flew. There's certain types of meticulous work that I love, and restoring old-timey photos turns out to fit the bill. This didn't turn out perfect—that right arm gets a little gooey the closer it gets to the left edge of the frame—but it's pretty good for a first attempt.
Also awesome: the fact that he's holding a smoke. He was like the James Dean of Newfies, so I'm told.

Comments

Anonymous said…
If I ever need an old timey photo Photoshopped, I'm totally harassing you for that. That looks wicked good!
Anonymous said…
You can always get Dave to make your pictures look old timey, and then tell people "Check out how much I look like my great grandma" or something.

Dave, that's some awesome photoshopping. You'd never know your Poppy was from China.
repliderium.com said…
Love that he's holding a cigarette! As I am currently in the throes of quitting it was the very first thing I saw. He looks smooooth.

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