Lena Schact Gerber

Lena Schact Gerber

Original Scan

I followed the steps below to retouch this portrait of Lena Schact Gerber, Ludwig Gerber's mother.

  1. Change Image Size (resolution 72 dpi from 300 dpi)
  2. Auto Levels
  3. Desaturate to perform color correction
  4. Image Size (to make the image a more managable scale)
  5. Crop out extra background
  6. Make the white in the image more white and less gray: Levels > move white slider to increase the whiteness of the white
  7. Add definition to the portrait: Unsharp Mask 50%, radius 1, Threshold 0
  8. Dress colored by adding new color fill layer with blending mode Vivid Light
  9. Used brush with Color burn setting to darken black ribbon
  10. Used the dodge tool just a little on left eye to bring it out of the shadows
  11. Add skin tones
    1. Skin 65% opacity (value from Photoshop book)
    2. Lips
    3. Highlights on face with lip color (method used for Luddie Gerber)
  12. Blur background
  13. Add color layer for blue background
  14. Flatten Image
  15. Vignette

Lena Schact Gerber, colorized

Retouched Photo