I have a couple photos that my aunt wants me to fix up, they are pretty faded and grainy. Also she would like it to be more vibrant and bright, here is one of the pics that is worse off, any ideas on where to start on making it like new?

Hi macattacks10,

Welcome to RP! :pleased:

As you said, the problems with this picture are several: noise, strong fading in some areas, spotted discoloration etc.
What I used, trying to improve it, were Neat Image to minimize the noise (on the 'Background Copy' which I forgot to rename...) then several Layers of Curves, Levels, Selective Colors (see snap of my Layers Palette).

Hope this helps.

Hi Mac, had a bit of a play with your picture as follows. Adjusted levels on individual channels to colour balance and adjust lighting and contrast. Evened out lighting top to bottom using graduated masks and curves. Smoothed out noise using Neat Image. Fine adjusted lighting using blank layer set to soft light, and using soft black and white brushes set to 5%. Total time about 15 mins. Still needs work, but gives you a direction to go I hope.

Sorry for the delay, I have been too busy to try attempting this, and now that I have a couple days off I decided to give it a try. And yikes I am really confused, I never attempted to do any restoring before, so this just seems crazy. And I googled Neat Image, and it appears to be some sort of plug in thats PC only and I have a Mac, any other ideas and more noobish way to go at this would be appreciated.

In the absence of a noise filter, try this.

Copy image to a new layer, apply Median Filter, set to about 1pix radius (vary according to image size). Now, apply Gaussian Blur, set to same as Median Filter. Now adjust layer opacity to allow original to be seen, the amount is done by eye for best result. Apply layer mask where necessary.

Hope this helps.