I have tried numerous times to make a decent photo of this old picture of my cousin.
But every attempt seems to make it worse instead of better.
Could someone please advise/help me turn this into something worth offering her

many thanks
smurf

absolutely adorable :)

i had to have a go at this one.

first thing i did was desaturate and then knock down the highs and even lighting out across the boards. this was curves, shadows/midtones/highlights and clarify.

next thing was a bit of clean up. this was mostly done with airbrushing, one usm filter, digital noise removal and a bit of clone and push. because of the contrasting, quite a bit of noise showed up, mostly spec type noise. so, the digi noise removal was mostly geared to that. airbrushing handled 90% of the remainder and a very small 'push' (smudge) handled most of the rest.

if you're giving this as a gift, i'd also suggest cropping. keep the original, but crop the gift. the girl and the dog are the main story here. the rest is somewhat nice for period's sake, but unnecessary in the main.

also, normally i would have at least doubled the image size here before doing anything. my submission here would likely get a bit too grainy if blown up larger now.

Apply a good noise filter like Noiseware to mthe base image. Use the channel mixer to optimize conversion to monochrome and then apply a Curve adj layer and increase the midtone contrast. You should be able to get pretty good results if you start with a good quality, high res scan.
Regards, Murray

Gentlemen

Many thanks for your advice and great restorations submitted
I must have a go myself using your guides

Very many thanks
Smurf

Hi again

I am sorry to be a pain, but I have now been given the original (damaged) photo to work from.
It is on gloss paper with better focusing ( previous was on matte paper)
Would this be easier to work from??

Smurf

yes, very definitely better. more clarity in the image, even with the additional smudges. i'd go with that one.

also, in this second one, there are some very good indications that this may have been a color print to begin with.

I am advised that the original photo was b&w but was hand painted to give the colour you can see
It is not known how much was actually coloured

smurf

ah, ok. then i'd simply desaturate it and if you want to re-color it later, that can be done.

Would be gratefull if someone could help me fix this
Is a bit too advanced for my skill levels as yet

many thanks in advance

smurf

well, murray has already done a nice job and you have mine as well. so, what additional help were you looking for here?

also, you do realize this is a peer to peer help site. we're perfectly willing to help you help yourself but not really keen on just doing freebies for folks. if you're looking for a professional job done by someone else, you might post this in the classifieds here on RP. i'm sure you'll get some takers. you could also offer to make a donation here to RP for having this done and see what comes up.

you've also stated that you've tried this many times yourself, so, i'd love to see what you've gotten so far. that often can help us to point you in the right direction as far as a next step. be brave. we dont bite too much :)

Have tried to get the sharpness correct without a lot of joy
Do not know anything about retrieving lost colour

smurf