I have 2 images I'm trying to restore for someone. They were probably taken in the early 70s, so have a bit of fading. But unlike the regular fading, these images look to possibly have been underexposed originally, so they're very dark. I'm not having much luck even getting started! I can fix all the boo-boos and stuff but the color/contrast correction is giving me fits. Also, it seems when I scan them in, they're very "grainy", even when scanning at higher ppi. Not sure what I can do on that part. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!! Here's the images.... the "jump" photo is the harder of the two as far as color/contrast probs. The other one will require more work but I can quickly hit the auto-levels and even see a difference in the man and the background, so I figure that one will be easier in that dept. Thanks!! I'm glad I found this site!!!
(edited to bump up the size of the thumbnails)

So far this is what I've come up with, using a combo of the Neat Image plugin and some basic levels changing. I'm still at a loss how to make this image better!

Try the Shadow/Highlight-adjustment, it works miracles on pictures like this!

Am I the only one who hears the Kung Fu Fighting song in their head when they see that first picture? :P

Hi there

Not sure that I helped much. I used curves, hue/saturation, and a colorburn layer to get rid of some of the gray.

Butch

Am I the only one who hears the Kung Fu Fighting song in their head when they see that first picture? :P


Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting (wata!)

I'm, with you

histogram adjustment on duped layer
brightness/contrast adjustment layer
curves adj layer.
digital camera noise removal (neat image would work fine also)
after that it was all cloning, airbrush and push (heavy smudge in ps) on blank layers over the other layers.

i also cropped the image and then enlarged it a bit.

near the very end i took down the highs in the pants a bit by airbrushing some noise/shadows on a separate blank layer and gausian blurring this at a setting of 10.

fun picture :)

craig

edit: oh, i also used the sharpening brush here and there as well.