DIMW - Digital ImageMaker World

A Series of Articles About the Development of a Photography Business
- continued

It seems certain that any lexicon covering new terminologies introduced within the era of the personal computer would include the word ‘photoshopped’. And I’d estimate that a large proportion of the general public would feel comfortable using it, in order to categorize a photographic image which has been extensively and digitally edited using a PC. It’s often, for example, taken to describe either the inclusion or deletion of an extra figure or subject within a group portrait. While Adobe Systems’ Photoshop® software can indeed be used alone for such image reconstructions, there are nowadays other, alternative digital toolkits which can be applied equally well to such a task.

I’m considering offering restoration as one of the services provided commercially by PhotoArtCanvas. This itself is another (also a related) Photoshop application that many will be familiar with. For example, here is an unretouched scan of a studio portrait print

featuring my grandfather. (The original had become a little faded and damaged across the years; the print itself measures only 3.8 by 5.5 inches and most of the surface damage seems to have occurred as the print itself slowly became detached from a hard cardboard mount.)

And so next we present the restored version of this portrait. The image itself is improved

in a number of ways; both overall (via some judicious cropping and by a resetting the dynamic range) and also locally (by “patching and filling” the damaged areas and cloning out the smaller flaws). But this is certainly not the limit of what can be done these days. For example, there are a number of plug-in tools for Photoshop which allow for colorization to be introduced, even on a semi-autonomous basis. The addition of color can also be applied either globally, to the whole image (as in the example here), or

selectively, to a single feature of the subject say.

Now a move further onwards, from photorestoration into phototransformation. This next image is (hopefully …) typical of our standard line of business at PhotoArtCanvas.

In this case the original photographic image has been transformed to have a pencil sketch appearance and impression. The main objective here is not so much to simply rescue a poor and/or damaged image, but instead to deliberately enhance it. In this instance, the facial features, the hands and the full physical bearing of the subject are given far more prominence. In essence, we use the very same principles of pictorial enhancement as would guide a watercolor artist, or a portrait artist using oils, but from within a digital toolkit and palette. For example, this can be done by adding extra emphasis to one or more aspects of the subject, through highlighting, or added contrast(s), or simplifications in color. Or, often a key approach, by de-emphasizing an otherwise intrusive background. Still further, as a careful augmentation, by the retention of some limited color. So here - as a final example, and in a substantially different vision compared to the original print - is a rendering with a classic

color-washed sketch appearance, which certainly removes some of the starkness from the monochromatic pencil sketch version and adds a subtle empathy to this particular portrait.

To date, I’ve carefully developed a total of fourteen different transformational styles for marketing via PhotoArtCanvas. They range from the traditional examples included in this posting on to schemes with much more dynamic and contemporary flair. Each of them has been optimized to allow for substantial enlargements of the original image and also for printing of the enlarged output image onto textured canvas. For example, the color-wash portrait of my grandfather prints nicely onto a 24 by 32 inch canvas panel, ideal for mounting and hanging in exactly the same way as an oil painting.