I would like to know if this old photo can be restore, as you can see, it had faded very badly over the years.

Gerald McClaren

Let me start by acknowledging that I know that I don't have the artistic skills needed here, but if you do, Gerald, then I think you could paint on some smoothed skin to bring this woman's picture to life. The original's details are certainly disrupted by age and possibly mold, but her eyes are mostly intact and the structure of her face shows through pretty well. Few, if any, of the images that you share with us are simple restorations -- there is usually a lot of damage, and require a good deal of time and effort to restore. I think this image could be restored enough to make it worth the time/effort if there is someone who remembers her (or remembers her at this age) who would love to see this photo again. There's little or no detail in her hair, either, and I used a brush to add hair -- just as an example. (Someday, I hope to be able to add in hair and have it look realistic, but I've got hours of practice to do to reach that goal.) ;)

Swartz, I thanked you for trying your hand on this photo. I acknowledge that it is a very tough restoration job.

Gerald McClaren

Gerald, it's fun to try -- especially when I'm not the one who actually signed on for the job. ;)

Good luck!

Several layers blended , multiply a couple times and overly with some neat image to reduce noise and unsharp mask to bring back contrast. Little dodge and burn here and there. It's not a finished product yet (it would take a lot of effort to take out the finger prints and bring back the lips and really do it right) but it can be done.

First time post. My effort here. Alot of elbow grease, painting with photoshop
Cut and paste from similar images. Used the clone tool and healing tool and blur functions.

gerald,

we've seen you contribute a lot of images to be worked on, but i'm curious to see some of your work (and no, i'm NOT accusing you of looking for freebies :) ).

Interesting photo..I like seeing everybodies approach..nice.
I tried using only the dodge / burn / and a very little smudge.
The burn in particular is nice because it brings out what is there.
I set it to 10% midtones..the dodge I used to simply lighten areas.

Lasa

I've never used the dodge or burn tools before but after seeing how well it worked in Lasa's hand, I had to give it my first try. Obviously, I need to practise some more. Other than that, I did some lasooing of the hair, pupils and 1/2 of her mouth, pasted, re-sized and then erased overlaps. It's still a real mystery to me how you can get the skin looking so beautiful. :)