Detail Enhancement

Started with a picture taken at my cousin’s daughter, Lindsey’s wedding, Nov. 4, 2006. I captured the image shooting in infrared (flashless low light). My Aunt Rose Ann turned and looked at the camera just as I pulled the trigger. The deficiency int the original image was in it being slightly out of focus. It needed detail enhancement to be ‘stock’ quality.

The problem with detail enhancement is noise. And different areas of an image will show more noise than others.

I start by upsizing: in this case 72 dpi to 144. Upsizing doesn’t help the photograph, but any work I do is in much greater detail.

Next I create layers: 1 is the original (locked), 2 is smooth (I give it a soft blur to eliminate all noise), 3 is detail enhanced layer (usually full of noise), 4 is background, and 5 is a layer that I call ‘draw’; in this photo, the eyes were blurred and the hair was over burned.

Combined layers: Hair, Glasses, Eyes, Detail

For the hair, I created an hair cut-out layer where I used the ‘shadows/highlight’ tool to eliminate the burn. Next I enhanced the sharpness and selectively blurred the noise out. Laid that layer over the ‘soft’ layer, and then reduced the opacity until I liked the look.

For the sharpness of the face, I did the same thing, except I erased the areas between the face lines to reveal the soft layer beneath. Then reduced the detail layer opacity— in this case to 55%— that’s where it looked right to me.

Much of the eyes I drew. I draw on a separate layer so I can erase and even discard it if it goes badly. Each line drawn can be individually faded in ‘edit’.  I fade until the line enhances without looking artificial. Again, the layer goes on top and is opacity adjusted to best effect. Since I adjusted each added line individually, in this case reducing the opacity of the entire layer wasn’t necessary.  Same treatment with the glasses.

To make the depth and detail more dramatic, I blurred my uncle some, and then blurred and darkened the background even more in another layer.

To check my work, I turn on all the layers in their proper orders and zoom to 400% (which is actually 800% upsized) and look for defects to correct. If it looks good there— it’s going to be great at 100%.

Satisfied, I start on a ‘save as’ version and archive the layered work. In the ‘save as’ version, I merge the layers and again check for defects. I also do final levels, contrast, and colors adjustment (those ‘auto’ tools— which can also be individually faded). Then I down size back to the original dpi and BAM— fantastic detail that looks unretouched (at least I hope so Ç;-) Took about 4 hours.

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