IMAGE MANIPULATION, RETOUCHING, CORRECTIONS, CLEAN-UP, & RESIZING

First off, if you are trying to restore an old tin plate, don't just scan it in and discard the tin plate. Not. No. Never. KEEP THE TIN PLATE. And, yes, it is worth taking it to, both, a professional photographer and a professional restorer. Tin plates have inestimable value, both historically and sentimentally for the family. ...Okay, end of lecture.

Pricing

Image Resizing: REDUCING THE SIZE: $15 per image plus $2.50 for each additional size. INCREASING THE SIZE: I'll have to see the image before I agree to try it. If successful...and I usually get excellent results, it will depend on the amount of time it takes as well as the number of tries. $30 per hour.

Everything else: $60 per hour billed in 15 minute increments. I give you and your wallet the benefit of the doubt, though, because I also figure what I think is fair for a price. That often means I'll reduce the bill, because I'm known to be a bit too picky sometimes, and pickiness takes more time than "un-pickiness". I recognize my own hang-ups and don't make you pay for my ideosyncrasy.

Notes

My favorite jobs are taking photos of people who don't want their real mug shots on the Internet and lopping off a nose, changing the jaw a bit, remolding the brows, raising or lower the cheekbones, adding or subtracting hair, making a gray-muzzle out of a 20-something and vice versa. Think I'm kidding? Nope. ...And for those of you wondering, yes, me is me. I'm not afraid to show my real face to the world. It's just too bad if it shatters the glass globe.

DO-IT-YOURSELF HINT: Photoshop by Adobe -- that's the program you need for good results doing retouching, corrections, and clean-up. There are open source alternatives that are just as good...such as GIMP. Here's a list:

ArtRage	Freeware artistic painting program designed to provide a realistic simulation of using paint on a canvas, pen on paper, pencil on paper....
Artweaver	Freeware paint program designed for creatinve painting: realistic brush simulation, artistic effects. OS: Windows.
Brush Strokes	Free image editor. Supports GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PCX, TARGA and AVI file formats. Also: GIF animations, filters, rotations, transformations.
GIMP	Freeware image editing program. The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. OS: Windows, Linux, X-Windows
iMage	Easy graphics editor. Supports 8, 16, 24 and 32 bit images. Supports GIF, BMP, JPG, PCX. OS: Linux and Windows
Image Enhance	Free image editor for bitmap and JPEG images. OS: Windows:
ImageForge	Freeware image creation and editing. Special effect filters. OS: Windows
Paint.NET	Freeware paint program for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. Layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and more.
Painter 25	Image editor. OS: Windows.
PhotoFiltre	Image retouching program. Good filter set.
PhotoPlus 6	A free professional photo editing program.
Pixia	Very nice freeware paint and image editing program for Windows.
Texture processor	Free program texture creation program. OS: Windows.
TwistedBrush Free Edition	Freeware paint program for creating images and effects.
Ultimate Paint	Paint program for Windows for photo editing and image creation with support for many file formats. Freeware and shareware versions are available. Also has an excellent GIF and JPEG optimizer. Gets a lot of recommendatins.
VCW VicMan's Photo Editor	Freeware. A photo editor with intuitive skinnable interface and a variety of features. OS: Windows.

Another useful tool is a Wacom. CRITICAL are good eyes and a good computer. You are going to use ZOOM a lot. You are also going to use PAN (the little hand used to scoot and skoochy the image by under your nose, your face glued to the monitor) ;).

These are highly miniaturized to save page load here.

Help Recreating Old Logos

Here we have logos recreated for the purpose of engraving. On the graphic art corrections page, I show the originals I got to work for reference alongside these, my recreation of those old logos. I get quite a few requests for graphic art help to bring images up in quality, usually either because old print files need help or sketches by a client need to be rendered to professional quality print specifications.

This...	From this.
	Sometimes people send me images to use that are very bad "Instramatic" snap shots. The image below the CD started as one of those. The group's name was Vertigo Haze, so I used that idea in creating something that would pass for the cover of a CD for them.
This is the image after I manipulated it.
This was a complete image manipulation, including adding and designing the hair, from a very bad cam shot. I have to dig through some old drives to find the original cam shot, but if you know anything about candid cam shots....

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