This is a 1925 photo of my Mom... been scared to start but finally did! So far I've only spent an hour or so on it, and realize I have a lot to do. Just thought it would be nice to get some unbiased opinions...:grin:

marge

Well you can post a larger image for review if you wish. There are several tutorials on this site.

Lots of spots and poor contrast.

What I did was to use levels to correct contrast.
I removed the color
I then used the spot healing brush to remove several of the large spots.
I used neat image to remove the finer grained imperfections
I then selectively sharpened the eyes to bring back some detail there
I then added the color back in.

Thanks, Phil - already looks better. I'm still stumbling along with it, just wanted to know if there was any improvement at all yet.

I'm sorry I did not answer your question. Yes most of the spots are gone. The question is, what should you do first, adjust the contrast or work on spots. What I do and that may not be correct is to work on the contrast and then do spots.

The reason for that is that as you adjust the contrast, previously corrected spots may show up as blemishes.

Others I am sure will have comments, but Perhaps what you should do to start out is to use a levels or curves adjustment layer and take it from there.

You have lost detail in the highlights,it also looks blurry for some reason

There are several tutorials on this site that goes about showing the steps to restore a photo.Here is one link to a tutorial here. http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=255

difficult image... white on white, always a bit tricky. to start i used a curves, then a resize to double the image size and make cloning and smudging easier. somewhere in there was also a brightness/contrast adjustment layer and a usm of 3/100/5. then, it was a clarify and fade correction. the clarify was severe to bring out detail, but that also brought out noise and other imperfections. and that led to a lot of clone, airbrush and push, which was pretty much the rest of the work. at the end i added one more slight clarify, 2.

of note was the shadows on the face. these were rather severe and made doing the face quite difficult. at first i tried to remove them completely. this turned out to be a mistake, so i left some in and took some out. i also did a bit of tiny push work on the eyes to define them a bit more.

all in all i worked on this quite a bit over several days.

Basically used the approach presented by philbach

Did a Black and white and a dark sepia because it seemed to show better by being a darker sepia like the original

Marge,
I would agree with Phil on the process. Most people new to restoration want to jump in and start removing spots or blemishes. That's because the tools are easier to use and the progress seems faster... more satisfaction in a short time. This could be fine for most photos you never plan to frame, just want them cleaned up a tad. But, for those that you treasure more, you should follow the guidelines of working on tonality first (i.e. correcting contrast with levels or curves). Then work on other imperfections (i.e. spots, lines, stains, etc). It is slower, but yields better results.

The one issue with your image is the lack of focus from the original photograph. You may never get that all back. But, in the end you can experiment with various sharpening techniques. When they do not work with the entire image well, work mostly with the face, hands and feet. These are the areas that viewers naturally look for detail. If the remainder is soft, we tend not to notice or worry about it.

Hope this helps. As yes, view the tutorials and buy some books. I personally like the book by Katrin Eismann, Photoshop Restoration & Retouching, Third Edition copyright 2006. Then you can earmark pages that are useful and highlight key elements that you will reuse often.

Thank you all so much for your input and hard work on my image. I did go out and buy Ctein's Digital Restoration From Start to Finsh and plan to get the above-mentioned Eisman book. Will post the next version soon...

marge