Captioning Group photo

[Skyman]

The Archivist at work wants to restore the photo below. They are in the process of identifying the people in the shot (they already know about 70%) but they are looking for a way to reproduce this name list and help people identify the person in the shot. One thing they want to try is to create a silhoutte version of the photo and number each person. They can then list the names of the people in the photo next to the their number which makes finding the person in the original much easier. Short of tracing each person in the photo I can't think of an easy way to do this. bumping up the contrast doesn't work as each individual person gets lost against the next. any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[opus]

you could "trace" one person's head & shoulders, then import that shape into in adobe Illustrator, fill it with a 20% black (or so) and stroke it, and then just do a cut & paste into the approximate position of each person. What I'm saying is, the shapes don't have to be exact to the heads, just the positions relative to each other. So you'd end up with a whole bunch of little grey "busts," which you can number. Plus then you can make it larger than the actual picture.

It's a bit of work, but could go relatively quickly with the cut & paste.

[Skyman]

yeah I was thinking to place the photo into illustrator as a reference then trace each person in illustrator, but I am hoping someone can suggest a less labour intensive process.

[opus]

what I was suggesting is that you don't trace each person individually. You just make one bust shot, and then copy and paste it across in rows. The whole copy-paste would take you fifteen minutes. You don't worry about exact size and shape, and you can even exaggerate position a bit (i.e. make some of the "hidden" people stand out more.)

Or even just use ovals for their faces. Enlarge the photograph, create an oval filled with 10% black, position it over the first face, hit "copy" (or command-C on a Mac), then hit "paste" (command-V) and move the second oval into position, "paste" and move the third one, "paste" and move the fourth one, etc. Then you would display both images side by side.

I can't think of any easier way outside of purchasing expensive software that might do the job for you. Of which I don't know any, but probably exists.

[Grandpaw]

I am going to give you a non tech way of doing it. Blow it up as big as you can get it and still be able to recognize the faces. Then get a fine white ink pen and just number them on the black robes in the photo. A few of them may need a line drawn out from the subject to where you have the number written due to not having enough room on the picture but I think you will be able to number most of the individuals right on the print, Jeff

[JamesV]

You might want to take a look at SliverLight from Microsoft. I seen it used on a picture and once your pointer goes over the person you can have the name pop up, similar to a Facebook tag. On a forum that I belong to we had a gathering and a person used it to identify everyone in the picture, he even put where we were from. I don't know anything at all about the program but it is a plug-in and can be used with Mac also.

James