Help Appreciated on this Restoration

[Chris and Nic]

Having trouble bringing this one to life for a friend. Original too big to scan so had to photograph.

http://public.fotki.com/ChrisRu/for_...on/photo1.html

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

[Flora]

Hi Chris and Nic,

welcome to RP!

A very difficult picture to improve....
I found it somehow very flat in spite of some blown out areas.... Increasing tone and contrast the usual way only worsened the problem so I tried to conceantrate on the blown out areas and mid-tones...
I did not restore anything (scratches etc.) and worked mostly on the 'bigger' boy.
I'm not satisfied at all with the result but here is my try:

• Duplicated the Background Layer.
• Created a Luminosity Mask (Ctrl+Alt+~), copied it on its own Layer (Ctrl+J) set the 'Mask Layer' Blending to 'Multiply'.
• Duplicated the 'Multiply' Layer a couple of times until I got an acceptable result.
• Merged Visible, added a Layer Mask and, keeping visible the Background and Top 'Merged' Layer only, with a soft black brush painted over the parts that had darkened too much and I wanted to restore to the original.
• Merged Visible.
• I used different Curves Adjustment Layers to darken the jacket and lighten the shirt (both a flat, nearly identical shade of grey on the original) to create a bit of contrast between them.
• To make them stand out more, I sharpened the boys a little and blurred the background a little.
• Used different Hue&Saturation Adjustment Layers to slightly colorize boys and background with different Hues.

Hope this helps a bit....

[Chris and Nic]

Thanks for you help Flora, I've really have been struggling with it, but maybe there only so far you can go with such an old picture with so little detail.

Thanks again,

Chris

[Pam]

I did some blending and curves adjustments using gradient masks. Then some burning and dodging and added a little toning. I also ran a shadow/highlight adjustment.