Keep washing out mother

[Bettyboop40]

My dad died a little over a month ago and I have been restoring all old photos,for many family members. Yet the wedding photo I keep washing out mom or she will look fake. This was the only picture they had it was enlarged from a slide. I will be grateful for any help
Sheila

[roger_ele]

Sheila

This is a difficult one and open to interpretation, in terms of what final look you would like. Being from a slide that was overexposed in the center means that there is and was no detail in those washed out areas. The only way to get detail there is to paint it in or borrow other parts of this or other photos. I went as far as I could without painting in the flowers. Here is a rough outline of what I did, please ask if you would like more detail.

1) duplicated background layer, changed new layer to multiply, masked so that middle area where it is too light is the only area affected. Duplicated this layer.
2) used multiple hue/sat adjustment layers, each set to colorize to color dress, face, background, and veil respectively
3)cloned away spots on dress and background and face
4)painted white / black on blank layer (layer in overlay blending mode) to lighten and darken to bring out the faces
5) borrowed a little color from dad to blend a little more color into mom
6) added a curves layer to mask all but the faces to increase contrast in the faces - then desaturated faces a little to compensate for too much saturation ( I guess I could have just changed the curves layer to luminosity blending mode, but I didn't think of it)
7) cloned the dress folds up into the waist

probably more that could be done, but I think I might be hitting the wall what still looks like the original slide and not obviously painted - of course you could convert to black and white or do an artistic, like watercolor...

Hope this helps, good luck, Roger

[Bettyboop40]

Roger

Thank you So much, it looks great. This picture has been driving me nuts. I couldn't belive for 44 years this was the only picture they had. I wish I knew who had the slides I would have taken a picture of the screen.
Thanks again
Sheila