Sooo friend sent me this horribly lq photo that they want to make into a xmas greeting card, BnW with color on the santa hats and candy cane. I haven't done any photo editing in about a year so ontop of it being lq i'm kinda rusty lol
Problem is no matter what techniques I try I can't get this thing to a point where it is sharp/clean enough to actually do the selective coloring -.-
I've thrown just about everything I know at it and its just fucked lol, so if anyone has any ideas or tips i would love them

Original


Desperately trying to sharpen before BnW without making it look rediculous and failing(reduce noise + highpass + selective unsharp mask through find edges)


BnW sharpening and smoothing of larger color patches with trying to do selective coloring with the rediculous blurry edges


Anybody at all, I'll probably post this in the photography section too cause idk where else to go lol

tell him to send you a higher quality photo

only way

that's what i told them, but they are stubborn -.-

i would try playing around with the values a bit, as bottom is pretty dark and the top side turns more into 1 light area, pushing some dark and light areas will create more contrast and will look more as a whole.

e: but yeah kinda lq and blurry

This post was edited by splijtsteen on Dec 10 2012 09:48am

shit in = shit out ..can't enhance it anymore than you did. you listed the things i was planning on suggesting that you already did.

dunno why i tried but w/e if you wanna use/ alter it be my guest

if they give u low quality pic they gonna get low quality back, if they complain just say this is why i asked u for a higher quality image lol

yeah, i just feel bad that this is the best I can do with current software XC

played a bit - not rly good but better

this
a pig in a tuxedo is still a pig