Dark and speckled photo help!

[hachaliah]

Ok, I've been struggling with this for months now. I need some help, advice, kick in the pants, etc.
This picture is dark and very VERY speckled. I have tried neat image as well as trying to clean it up by hand without losing the details of the faces and clothing. Any suggestions? The little boy in the front is my grandfather and it's one of those pictures I'd love to be able to print a clean copy of so I can store the original somewhere safe.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

--Brian--

[klassylady25]

Good Morning Brian,

When I click on the photo I do not get the larger version. Hmmm

[Ken Fournelle]

Brian,

You could try a Surface Blur. I tried a 4 radius, 8 Threshold and then
made a mask and brought back the detail in the faces, the boys white suit, the white blouse of the woman on the right and background detail.

k

[philbach]

I just used Neat Image which cleaned up the spots nicely.

[cardmnal]

I used photoshop's despeckle command, duplicated that layer and applied sharpen more which over-sharpened everything. I than used edit>fade sharpen more and set at screen and decreased the opacity. It took about 30 seconds and your grand face is clear without loosing the crispness of the rest of the photo.

Of coure if you you want it to look real good use philbachs techniqe

Alan

[mistermonday]

...And this is what the image looks like with the noise filter Noiseware applied.
Regards, Murray

[Cameraken]

Hi Brian.

You already have some great suggestions to repair this image; however it appears to have been scanned in greyscale and then converted to RGB.
If I am correct then we may be able to get even better results if the image is re-scanned in RGB and reposted in RGB.

Ken.

[unimatrix001]

here is my rendition
used patch tool to repair, used selective color darkened blacks and neutrals. used noise ninja to smooth and sharpen. added slight sepia to finish