George Jenkins

[a5b6c7]

Tin type in baaaad shape. Original dimensions are 1 x 1.5 inches. It has a wrinkle in the middle, which doesn't help. The real problem(s) are the dark spot on the eyes. I really have no idea what to do with this. Can anyone help? -- Curtis in Colorado

[Kraellin]

hi, (i'm not even going to try to type your 'name' here )

yup, pretty badly damaged. but there's also another problem here. i dont know what you used to scan this with or in what resolution you scanned in or if you used any filters or processes during the scan, but there's quite a bit of digital artifacting/noise on this image. some of this could be from jpg compression in having to post here, but i suspect some of it might have come off the scanner also. could you post how you scanned this and with what and at what resolution? if we can clean up any of this with a better scan, that would be a good first step.

but, all that aside, what i generally do on ones like this is try to bring out the image first. get the detail if possible. and since this one is quite dark, a good first step would be to lighten it up and because it's somewhat faded, you could also add a bit of contrast. i like to use a contrast/lighten adjustment layer first just to get it to a more workable condition.

and, since there is almost no background worth saving in this one, and because it's so 'dirty', i like to clean up the easy stuff first; sort of like cleaning up a workshop just so you can do some work so, some clone, smudge, fill, whatever will tidy up that background a bit will help get rid of some of the distraction to the main image.

as for more, i'm going to wait till you can tell me more about this scan and what you did.

craig

[Ed_L]

If you scan this image again, try scanning it in RGB. This way you can check out each of the channels to see if there is information available that doesn't show up in grayscale. You might be surprised how good this works, many times.

Ed