My first post, lets see how it goes....

A customer has this old, faded, hand written note and wanted it restored so he could read the words. I was able to bring the writing back out with curves and level but I had to convert the image to b&w. The customer would like it with the original color (purple text and yellow background.) I'm not sure where to go next.

Try opening both the original and the retouched image. Drag the original image from the layers pallette to the retouched image while holding down the shift key (so that is centered). You will now have a new layer in your retouched image's layers pallete. If this layer is not the top layer drag it to the top. Then change the blending mode of the new layer to color. Now you have brightness of the retouched image and the color of the original.

The only problem I can see is that if you increased the contrast in the retouched image too much you won't see the color because really-really dark purple is black and really-really light yellow is white ;)

To show the color and lower the contast a little you could add a levels adjustment layer. Drag the bottom triangle sliders in a little (this is what you would get if you could drag the top sliders out further than the ends ...;)

Hope this helps, if not just wave ...
Roger

Hi JHallgren, what I did was change the colour of the background a little using Image - Adj - Replace Color. I sampled various areas using the + eyedropper, then adjusted the colour to one similar but lighter. I repeated this with the writing, and changed the colour to one darker and close to the purple used. Enclosed is an example of the result. The image still needs some work to refine it, but it gives a starting point, and will no doubt be better with the original scan than with the reduced image I had to work on. Hope this helps.