New to the forums.. My first restoration.. Please critique it for me

[jon1996]

Hello,
I did this back last year when I first got Photoshop 7, I have learned alot since then, I found this forum tonight, I love it, I have been looking for a restoration forum to hang out at since last year, I have found my home, But this was my first attempt at a colorazation, I saw a thing on tech tv about it and said I would give it a try, This picture is of my mom and sister as kids, I first restored the original then colorized it, Please tell me what I could change,

original
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...lScanSmall.jpg

restored B&W
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...toredsmall.jpg

Colorized
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...rsmallcopy.jpg

[Legacy~Art]

Well i like the color one very much, might think of changing the dirt, to a different colour, so it don't blend in too much with the kids legs, but maybe the dirt is that colour there, here the dirt in england is mainly black...or grey, or dark mud colour, so depends on what part of the world your in i guess...

And a warm welcome to you hun nice to see you on the forum...

[Caitlin]

Both versions look good to me. In the colourised version, I would probably repair the border a bit more, and the sky still has a little evidence of damage showing. The sky in your B&W restore doesn't look completely real though - I think the original sky might be better.

Have you tried doing a little sharpening on the girls? They look a bit soft compared to the house currently. (It's a bit hard to test on such a small image - in photoshop if you choose save for web, you can adjust it to be exactly 100k to get the file to the maximum allowable size - your current image is 50k)

I like your overall colour choices - very lifelike and subdued - Well done.