Puno C&C

pickarooney

I took these two at a festival in Peru about two years ago and want to print them to hang on my kid's wall. I really like the shots myself, though mainly for the subject matter and what they evoke for me personally.

I took them with a cheap compact, had no time to frame or otherwise compose them (didn't want them to see me, brass band was heading my way!) and they're not exactly straight. Also, to my shame, I shirked on the megapixels for fear of running out of SD space and there is some visible pixelation at <30cm viewing distance when blown up full size. I know there's not a whole lot I can do with these, but I'm in two minds as to what to do with the ends of the boys' pic. I don't like the extra white arm on the right, but don't want to sacrifice the boy's own arm by cropping. In the girls' photo the street in the foreground jars a bit but I'm not sure how to deal with it. Also, they're obviously quite blurred. I don't have Photoshop, just GIMP and Paint.net, FWIW and am a total novice at both taking pictures and post-processing them.
So, if there's anything you can think of that might improve them slightly, I'm all ears.

YogiBear

I used layers to change to above.. I found it hard to work with though because it's so small...

YogiBear

Obviously that can be improved upon!

Ideo

My very VERY quick attempt!

pickarooney

The RHS of Boys one looks really well in Ideo's retouching (although you seem to have added white space to the foreground?). Can you explain briefly how you did it so I can try myself? The girls one looks decent (apart, obviously, from the unfinished bit on the left!) and I suppose a crop off the bottom wouldn't go astray, even if I'd ideally like to keep the pictures the same size.

Is there any point in removing the reflected figure in the window or trying to sharpen the whole thing? Can't hurt to try I suppose!

Thanks

Ideo

Ah its not that good. In fact I think it looks a bit too clean so I'd go back and clone those white specks a bit more, make it look more realistic!

Basically I used the lasso tool in CS2 to select the outline of the boy on the RHS.

Then I inverted it so the area within the outline wouldn't be touched as this makes things a whole lot easier!

Then I used the clone tool and cloned the red panel. I went over each area a few times to get a good mix of shades. I also used the heal brush to also mix the shades a good bit.

I also upped the contrast a little and the saturation a bit to inject a bit of colour in their faces in both pics.

Also, I sharpened both images. Although my sharpening skills are fairly limited so somebody will be able to do a much better job!

I wouldn't crop the bit of space in the girls photo tbh. It would reduce the size of the image and when you go to enlarge it the image will be spread over a greater area so the actual quality will be reduced. Make sense?

Oh and I've no idea where that bit of white space in the boys pic came from. Edited photos here!