Restoration Help

[s.keenum]

I am new to this site and to photo restoration in general. I have inherited some old B&W family photos that I scanned (in color mode) and am trying to restore. Most of these photos have fading/some tint from age. My questions are:
What do you correct first? Remove the color cast? Fix scratches, tears, spots, etc.? Convert to grayscale?
What is the best way to deal with a faded sky (just gray/white blob with a bluish tint)?
How do you deal with parts of pictures with no or little detail?
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks.

[Kraellin]

hi s.keenum and welcome to RP.

i moved your thread over to the restoration forum as that's where it'll get the attention it needs.

to answer your questions, it's easiest if you simply post an image or even a portion of an image and let us look. just a whole lot easier to answer that way.

in general, and this is very general, it's best in restorations to bring out the detail first. this may add other problems but you want that detail. it's also a good first step to resize the image larger. very small pictures do not correct properly due to the way monitors display things.

after that, it depends a LOT on the individual image. some need the tears mended or to be rebuilt where there are missing pieces and so on. restoration is part restoration, part rebuilding and part retouching. generally, you want to be able to see what you've got first. then, resize to see it even better, then to clean it up or rebuild and then and only then, do you worry about retouching and colorizing and things like that. so, it's sort of a three or four stage process, find it, fix it and make it purty

and always remember the restorer's motto, 'do no harm!'

[s.keenum]

Thank you for your reply, your advise and for moving my thread to the appropriate section of the site.
I will try to post a representative picture to the site in the next day or so.
Again, thanks for your help!

[Kraellin]

you're welcome.