Hello all,
I'm new to the retouching end of photography, but as I'm now the family historian, I guess I'll be jumping into it head first.

My first project is of my Great Great Grandfather and Grandmother. The original doesn't look too bad, but what would you suggest to make it look GOOD?

Thanks for such a great site!

-Bill

Hi Bill, welcome to RP.

Great photo, full of character.

I wouldn't do anything too much with it, I'd want to keep it as near to original as possible.

So, I did a slight levels adjustment to up contrast a little, and ran it through Neat Image, to reduce noise levels.

Finally, sharpened a little using High Pass/Soft Light method.

What a wonderful photo.

I didn't do too much to this image, but I wanted to remove the yellow cast.

I duplicated the background layer and made a Levels Adj., like Gary. I then made a Channels Mixer layer and converted to B&W-60/20/20. I merged visible while keeping the layers and applied Neat Image to reduce noise.
I made an empty layer set to softlight blending mode and accented areas of the image. I Merged Visible again and made a sepia tone for the print. Flattened and applied Smart Sharpening.

k

Hi Bill,

Welcome to RP! :pleased:

I agree with the others ... Great picture!!!

I also didn't do much .... Created a Shadows Mask (the action for it can be downloaded here (http://www.retouchpro.com/resources/fileinfo.php?id=10)) and used neat image on the shadows to minimize the noise.

Used Curves to balance Highlights and shadows.

Hue/Saturation to decrease the sepia/Yellow cast.

Used USM to enanche contrast and sharpen lightly ....

Hope this helps ...

Thank you all for your suggestions and instructions. I'm looking forward to applying them to the hundreds of photo's I have to work with. I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time here. Once I knock out the easy ones, I'm sure I'll be asking for help again on the ugly ones. I think CS2 will be getting a workout.

Thanks again!
-Bill