I've scanned this image from an old poloroid picture. It's very faint, and hard to make out the details of the two faces.

I've tried my very novice hand at it with a simple levels adjustment, blended as multiply, with a layer mask to cut out the extreme right section of the photo where it's darkest.

How did I do?

How could I do better?

A bit more adjustment on a 2nd layers level, concentrating only on the people. Also ran scratch removal filter on everything but the people.

Edit: Looking at this one, I might have darkened the facial details in a bit too much...

Cropped the image, ran it thru a light Noiseware, then used the levels to even the image out, then finished up with that the burn tool to darken some light areas.

Lasa

I can't seem to get any decent results from noiseware or neat image or such. Of course, I just use the automatic. Do you adjust any settings manually for noiseware?

Here's my most recent attempt. Still not as well defined as yours, but I'm getting there.

I've got to try working with the burn on it, I'm not altogether comfortable with that yet. I have a tendency to either not see any change at all, or to overdo it so that the burned areas are much too dark.

just a ton of clone, push and airbrush. a little texture pattern on the chair. at least, i think it's a chair :) done over several days, a little at a time and i think there was a clarify, digital camera noise and maybe a curves and brightness/contrast adjustment layers. all pretty standard stuff for me. i also doubled the image size before working and converted the whole to 8 bit color rather than grayscale.

the pants area on both boys was so rough that i just left it alone, for the most part.

I think the one on the right is a girl, and the thing to her right is a large pillow. Couldn't swear to either, but that's the way it looks to me.

I think the boy on the left is holding his feet, and the girl is holding something... looks like a rubber chicken or such, but most likely a doll. :)

aurock,

i tend to agree with you about the pillow as opposed to my chair. i went back to the original and had another look. i can also make out at least 3 feet in there and some socks.