Spent about an hour on this one. Removed scratches, levels, sharpened some, contrast, selective use of clone and blur. I am not really happy with the background (too lifeless) but I don't have the time to recreate the old photo booth look. Any suggestions?

The trouble with removing a figure from the original background is that unless you are careful to match the new background in terms of lighting and texture it just looks like a cutout. Much better to use the original if possible.

Also you've increased the contrast a little too much, which brings out the grain. Pictures of this age just don't have the contrast that a modern picture does and you need to treat them accordingly, be a little less drastic with the contrast adjustments.

I've done a very quick workover of your original, nothing more than a bit of cloning, with a minor levels adjustment and a touch of sharpening using High Pass/Soft Light.

Bit crude, but you'll get a general idea of what can be done.

My own style a little touch of Gary's edited work... :idea:

Thanks for the advice Gary. The contrast and sharpening were overdone for sure. I suppose I could go for the softer look. When I have a little more time I will work on the original background.
I did one very similar to this last year but spent a couple of hours working on the background before I was through.

Mchilly your work looks really nice. Thank you.

I will give it another go tomorrow when I have some spare time.

Levels, contrast, removed cracks, replaced frame, and smart sharpened.

After selecting the lady and placing her on a separate layer, I constructed the background by using a foreground to background gradient using difference blending mode. Using the gradient several times reconstructed the folds in the "photo booth."

I placed some shadows where it appeared they were on the original photo

In this case I wouldn’t convert the photo to B&W or get rid of a channel, but at first I’ll try to recover as much detail as possible.

I duplicated the b/ground layer and set the healing brush to pattern - used Blue Velium, and went over the b/ground on the image. This could look a whole heap better if the time was taken to select out the lady :grin: Did a quick bit of healing, mostly the face area and then used the B&W layer adjustment in CS3 to make it B&W.