Here is my before and (almost) after. This picture was scanned from a picture that was printed out on plain paper. Following mistermonday's stain removal tech http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-restoration/21160-where-begin.html#post186686
, coffee stains were removed. Also lightened things up.

Any suggestions as to how I could make this better photo for printing, please feel free...

Regards!

nice job on a difficult image!

there are a couple nit-picks i'll give here. his hair... looks like some clone marks there.

his hand... what is that white between his thumb and forefinger? is that part of her hand or what? if it's a smudge or stain, remove it. if it's her hand, make it more clear.

and as a personal choice, not necessarily a mistake or omission, i think i'd have left the background darker, masked it off and done the lightening on the rest of the image like you did. the reason is, when you lighten a dark area like that that really has no discernable detail or contrasts, it makes the area that sort of cloudy white/dark which looks like the image wasnt fully restored. i hope that makes sense :)

but despite the nit-picks, excellent job!

Kraellin-
I appreciate your feedback. I completely agree with you about the dark background area. I originally did have that area darker. I showed the lady I was doing it for and she wanted it lighter. I think I'm going to try and talk her out of it.
As for his hand, it is in fact her hand... so I'll work on that one.
As for his hair, that actually is caused by the texture/style of his hair. From my understanding is that he had real thick curly/wavy hair... so I could take away the 'clone marks' but that's the way his hair was.

Thanks again for your comments/suggestions.

Regards...

rsparks,

well, maybe just take the pattern out of those white marks in his hair then? just looks a bit fake like it is.

and re the background, oh well, whatever the customer wants :)

I think you've done a good job so far.. keeping in mind what's been discussed already.

It would appear the original image was not of good quality, so you are only going to get so much detail before it begins to look artificial.

One other area that I would point out is the womans face. While the original light was uneven, it may be nice to even it out now. It may be easier to lighten the dark areas in her lower left cheek, rather than darken the rest.

Just a thought. Otherwise, a very good start on a difficult image !