this restore was a challenge that i couldn't pass up
it doesn't look like a great deal of work, however, the photo had fallen off the wall and the glass had cut quite a bit of the photo
also, as the photo size was an 12 x 10', i had to scan it in 2 parts
hope you can give me some of your suggestions for a better restore
regards
Exo

Good job on the clean up and combining the two scans. My only comment is that the restored version appears more out of fucus than the original, is it an illusion because of the low res jpeg? It looks like you used a filter like dust and scratches or used a sharpening technique that grouped the big detail at the expense of the small details. If you agree, try to run down what you did and maybe we can help.

Roger

Exo, unfortunately you sharpened it with too large a pixel setting with unsharp mask and ended up with haloes around the edges. Next time try the high pass method, and sharpen just the eyes and mouths with a very fine unsharp mask.

Since your file is large with a lot of pixels maybe you can fix it. Attached is what I did to this smaller one, but these settings would not apply to a large file like yours. The principle should, though. It's important NOT to sharpen the halo around them, so make a selection just inside the border between the kids and the background so you leave it untouched. Also select around any haloes at shadow lines around arms etc. (which I didn't bother to do on this quick sample) so those haloes don't get worse.

If you don't have KPT6 then try high pass twice and "sharpen edges" <--I did use that, but forgot to mention it in the blurb under the pic. Then follow all sharpening steps with a final curves adjustment, since sharpening makes high contrast dark lines.

After sharpening, a final step is to layer your original over the new version and fade its opacity till enough of the grays in the clothing patterns return, then erase away the heads and the rest with a big fuzzy eraser-- reduced opacity on all head, then 100% on eyes and mouth. The two layers should blend seamlessly.

I've had to do a lot of these steps on old family photos, taken with cheap cameras with poor focus ability, after enlarging them...usually works well for me. Hope it can help you correct yours. If not, make a sketch instead! I think these three kids would look great as a b/w sketch.

Phyllis

Phyllis, You mentioned a "blurb under the picture", but I think you're attachment got cut off again, because I only see the heads of the kids. I'm very interested in what you did, since I have a lot of these blurry photos myself!

Thanks, Jeanie