This image began with a small photo that I found among two boxes of my dad's photos that recently came in the mail. The well-worn little snapshot shows my dad and my Uncle Barney at the piano, with my mother looking on. My cousin Shirley is in the background, and my grandmother is in the corner. So this is in New York, in Brooklyn. The back of the photo is dated Mar. 31, 1956, the year my folks to my cousin and me, both 8 years on, on a train trip to New York. This is the only picture I have seen that shows the two brothers making music together. My dad's family sent Barney for music lessons, but couldn't afford lessons for my father too. But both brothers were musical, so Barney would come home and share what he had learned. I love this picture, but the snapshot had a lot of problems, so I decided to try to fix it up. The wear and tear on this photo makes me think my dad looked at it often, maybe even carried it in his wallet. I started by retouching what I could. The original image was out of kilter, so I straightened it. I used Painter to fill in some background so I could straighten the image without having to crop out my grandmother. I also adjusted the focus and adjusted the color to eliminate a yellow-green cast. Then I added some posterizing effect, which brought out some other colors. It sounds like a lot of work for a small snapshot, but this one is definitely worth the effort.
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