Help needed: jpg artifact removal
 

My old school's drama group needs some kind of promotion for their play which is due in two weeks. So, I've been assigned the task of photoshopping faces onto various statues of Greek gods. The director just mailed me the people's pictures, and since I'm on 56k, he had to shrink them a little, which turned out to be less than satisfactory.

(Link to picture of pretty girl removed. Missed out, guys. :D)

I know I'm probably screwed, but is there any way in Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop to get rid of the blockiness? I need absolutely clean images. The end products will be in black & white, if that's any help.

Thanks in advance.

The way I see it is, you've got 4 options:

1) Ask him to burn you a CD with the background/people pictures on it. Then it should be pretty easy from there.

2) Suck it up, bite the bullet, and have him e-mail you the full pictures.

3) Make small posters. This will allow you to hide the 'jaggieness' from everyone outside of 18 inches.

4) If options 1-3 don't work, give me a link to all the COMPLETED background picture, the people pictures, and where the heads should go, and I'll see what I can do.

Seems like the actual problem is in the dimensions of the images. We had made a series before which turned out very nice with, speaking per picture, a filesize of ~50k and only 1/3 as big (in dimensions) as the image I posted. So I asked him to change the second series accordingly (in hope he still has the original images) and remail them to me.

Thanks for the advice, and the offer too. I'll get back to you on it if I run out of time ;).

I'm pretty sure once the artifacting damage is done, you can't change it, which is why the preparations must be made beforehand.

Although, to make it look better, you could use some photoshop effects like patch--if a certain area is particularly artifacted on, say, the cheek, you could patch it up with good areas of the cheek. Blurring and other small effects might help, too.

Dude, that seriously looks like a camera problem, not a resizing problem. Actually...::Examines picture closer::looks like a scanner problem! Did your instructor scan these or something?

Anyway, suck it up, get the full-sized images, and then post it somewhere. Then we can see where the problem is. But seriously, I don't know how a picture can get that crappy just from resizing.

By the way, she looks hot. Can I like, have her phone number or somethin'?

Well, I don't know what he did to those, but scanning can be ruled out. The camera was in perfect working order as far as anyone knows, although the batteries did run out towards the end. Truth be told, in that series there were a lot of pics that were even worse and look like they've been reduced to 256 colours.

Well, I'm still awaiting the second e-mail from the director (not to be picky, but instructor... nah. I'm an independent worker :)). Then I shall see.

XD I'm Jack's complete lack of surprise... okay, a) Germany, b) boyfriend, c) will kill me if she finds out about this. Note to self: remove that link before I recommend 8BT to her or any of the other actors.

That's color reduction at work there. You were right.

Paint shop pro has a jpeg artifact removal thing wherein you can increase colors up to 16 million colors and make an attempt but I don't know how well it would work. You should tell your instructor to encode them in .png format. bitmap would be insane for you to handle but png is good, supports 16 million colors and doesn't have a filesize that's like trying to squeeze a rhino through a keyhole.

However I imagine that the actual dimensions of the statues won't be as huge? It might not be as noticeable if you shrink the face's size down.

That being said, boobies!

Oddly enough, according to PSP those are 16 million color images. Go figure. Anyway, I put the image through the jpg artifact removal thing process, turned it black and white and resized it to dimensions closer to those actually needed. Still looks kinda meh, if you ask me. And remember, this isn't even the worst pic of the bunch. I tried it on another one, and it made real nice colourful splotches on another actor's face, which would come in incredibly handy if the ancient Greeks had had a God of Clowns.

And looking at the reactions to that image, I explicitly forbid you to put the "splotches on face" phrase into another context.

This one isn't. I might have to rethink the whole "recommending 8BT" thing. I still need those testicles.

Edit: The director now has sent me the original, unaltered images via CD. I rejoice. Problem solved; now for covering up my tracks.

Hey, you have a pair at your (not-immediate-but-soon-to-be-as-of-August-10-)disposal already.

Anyway, now that you have good pictures, would you mind showing us what exactly it is you're doing? I don't know about these people, but I don't like being left in the dark.

It shouldn't be very hard to put the faces of people onto pictures. That's some of the more basic stuff you can do.