Help get me started water damage photo

[Michelle K]

I have the most gorgeous photo and I have no idea where to start the restoration. I'm new to restoring, but not new to Photoshop. I'm using CS2. Can someone give me some pointers?
Thanks

[xxbondsxx]

what is that a photo of?

I guess you could just do some hue adjustments with layer maps, and maybe some clone stamp tool to get rid of that fungus thing, but I can't really help you cause it looks really bad.

[Michelle K]

Yeah, it's in rough shape. It is the bottom of a wedding dress. She is against a black background. I have noticed that when I go under channels, you can see the bottom of the dress better in the blue channel.
I wonder where to start.

[Kraellin]

well, you picked a doozy to make your start in restoring. i think you've got two options here, neither of them really great. one, take the photo to a physical restorer and see if they can remove some of that mold/fungus without damaging anything further and then scan again. and two, borrow heavily from another good image of a wedding dress. this thing is so bad off that a normal clone treatment is going to drive you nuts and just not look very good. also, if you have another picture of the same dress, that might work to clone from.

craig