Not Perfect, But Happy :)

We like to make all work perfect! :)  But with every job though there is a trade off between time and perfection ... which translates to both money and my own feelings that the image is not getting that much better for the time put in ... I have a lot of patience for detail work, but keeping it real I can reach a point where it becomes more of a challenge to keep going.

This was a tough one ... faded with very little detail...

Once the detail was enhanced, and the yellow color cast was removed - we were left with colors that were far from real.  Color information has been lost from the original, the checked dresses were originally red and white...

Below is a close up of a little of the detail.  Dark damage in little specks existed everywhere! 

Here is the photo completed.  Problem areas, probably the red and white squares, they took a huge chunk of time to paint in and still aren't perfect and the highlights on the skin ... because of the fading there was little detail in the lighter areas of the skin, so everything of a lighter tone is one flat tone.  I painted in highlights as best as I could ... without changing the shape of the face structure.  I am not an illustrator, ie painting things in from scratch and in this case I think that shows ;).  I did sit down with the client a couple times to tweak the color choices and to decide how much further to go with the restoration and the client was very happy with the finished result :).