hi this is the only good pic my mum has of her dad and it was about 2inch by 2 inch when i got it . It would be great if some one could have a crack at fixing it as i live in belfast N Ireland there aint a lot of this people doing this type of work . i look forward to your help and support as i learn how to do this work for my myself

heres the original
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd102/irishsnakes/gran.jpg

heres my attempt
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd102/irishsnakes/sofar.jpg

Andy, Welcome to RetouchPRO! Not sure if you started from a photo or a scan of one, but the image has a large amount of color noise suggesting either a poor scan or someone has made a brightness adjustment to an underexposed image or scan. In any case the first thing to do is reduce the color noise with a good noise filter - I used Noiseware by Imagenomic. Next use the clone tool or healing brush to clean up the scratches and damaged areas. Then clone away as much of the shadow on the left side of his face / head.
After cleaning up the baseline image you need to sadjust the contrast. Here you can use a curves or level adjustment to increase it while at the same time lightening the face a little.
Belwo is a quick 5 minute example (no attempt at precision). With a clean high resolution scan, you should be able to get a much nicer restoration.
Regards, Murray

Could not get it sharper.

Andy if this is important to you, can you provide better starting image for everyone who want a try on this forum? higher resolution and if possible a better scan? or digital shot?

Used gaussian blur to background, and adding noise back. You lose background information by doing this, but it add also more depth.

Here's my version Andy.

used patch tool to fix imperfections. noiseware to reduce noise. duped layer ran high pass filter at 1.2 set to linear light merged down ran noiseware at defaults
faded setting to softlight. came up with this

I've done noise reduction in LAB, other adjustments using curves & HSL.

Nice one chillin!
What is LAB?

i scanned the photo as its the last one we have can some one recommend how i should go about getting a better start photo ! Just wanna say already loving some of your attempt thanks a lot.
This would be very important to my mum and i the better i can present it to her the happier she will be

ive had i good look at the original and its got all the speckles because i scanned the image at the highest it could be scanned and thought it might be the original that was dodgy .
I will be happy with wot u can do with such a poor photo

Andy, it is clear that there are dust specks on the original, however if you look at the image, particularly the background, there appears to be strong color noise which is not typical of color film. It appears to have been generated largely by the scanner. You can verify this by taking a mignifying glass and examoning the paper photo to check for alternating color dots.
The image is 1.68 inches on a side. If you want to print the restored image at approx 8 x 8 inches then you should be scanning the original at min of 2400 DPI. Such a scan will also make it easier to do the restoration. You could then upload the full size scan somewhere for members to download.
Regards, Murray

What is LAB?

RappScallion, this thread will help (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-retouching/19037-rgb-cmyk-lab-dan-margulis.html)

okay thats great will give that a go thanks very much

okay thanks for the advice i have made sure scanner is clean and pic and clean and largest dpi scanner will go to is 1200dpi the output i need is a square 320 pixels x 320 pixels (roughly 4 inches) heres is the pics thanks a lot.

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd102/irishsnakes/webpic1200dpi.jpg

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd102/irishsnakes/webpic2.jpg

i used to diff settings so u can take ur pic thanks again

Andy, neither of you new files are 1200 dpi. The 1st is 300 dpi just like your orig posting. You 2nd is save as 1200 dpi but if you check the size it is only 0.85 inches meaning effectively it is the orig size at 600 dpi - still inadequate.
If your scanner can only achieve 1200 dpi, my guess is it is quite old and probably very low end which explains why you are getting that heavy color noise.
Try recanning again but but try to see why your software is resizing it down. Also, when you take the scan, turn OFF all of the scanner auto settings - no descreen, no color adjustment, no tone adjustment, NO brightness adjustment, no saturation adjustment, no auto anything. Then save the raw scan preferably as an uncompressed tiff or psd at full size.
Finally if the image is important, consider taking it to a phtoshop or a friend with a higher end scanner and get the best quality scan that you can.
Regards, Murray

I think that the photobucket is resizing it.

ok thanks for the help everyone ill see wot i can do oh and check out my band website its www.theuntouchables.info

Levels
Contrast (slight)
Color corrected
Reduced color noise

A few other corrections, but this is the end result.

brilliant candice

Thank you Andy for your kind words.

Candy

A little late starting this. I used several levels adjustments, cloned the scratches, color correction and digital noise removal. I think I got it too smooth though.
Nan