Help with image. Little/No detail

[tommy3.0]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if anyone here could provide any insight into the best way to go about restoring this photo. This is the only known photo of my girlfriend's Great Grandmother and I would love to restore it for the family. I have been restoring photos as hobby/side cash for about 8 years now. So I know my way around Photoshop relatively well. I have no problems with the tears, pen, spots etc. My problem is that the photo has barely any detail at all. I don't even know if it is possible to achieve more detail without "painting" it in. I have tried all techniques I know of to no avail. I have tried working from a desaturated version also with no decent results. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

*edit: I'm working in CS3 by the way.

[unimatrix001]

switched to lab mode
used a curves layer adjustment on all layers
converted back to rgb
desaturated
levels adjustment
blending mode to luminosity

[Kraellin]

hi tommy and welcome to RP.

tough image. i started by duplicating the background and then adding a contrast/brightness adjustment layer.

copy merge and paste to new layer.

usm at about 5/100/5. duplicate layer.

clarify at about 4. duplicate layer.

fade correction. duplicate layer.

shadows/midtones/highlights. duplicate layer.

add a blank raster layer. push, push, push, push, push....rinse, repeat (push is a type of smudge in psp). all i did was around the head and shoulders a bit.

red eye removal to add back eyes.

more push.

now, all of that was done to get more definition. i'd probably go back and then color and light correct for all the stuff i did at the onset.

[toe]

G'day tommy, welcome.
I had a go with some adjustment layers and then tried to even her dress up a bit with color variation layers. gives you a bit better look at her anyway.

[tommy3.0]

Thanks for the welcomes and the replies. You guys brought the details in her face pretty well. I don't know what they were thinking when they colorized this. Its like a child just colored over it with pastels or charcoal. They didn't even stay in the lines. I've never seen an old color job like this. It seems like some kind of chalk. I'm just going to recolor it myself. I'll post the final image when I am finished. Whenever that may be. Thanks for the help. I can't believe I never came across this forum before.

[des151]

Hi Tommy3.0,
I tried to bring out some detail on Great Grandmother's face.
Ray

[chillin]

There is still a lot of room for improvements, but for now this is the best I could come up with. I didn’t want to lose the lady’s expression. I only can guess, she wasn’t thinking about feeding chickens.
It is a very difficult pic, a lot of jpeg artifacts on top of the picture's imperfections. I don’t think there is a simple method of restoring it. Better quality scan could yield better results.

[Kraellin]

the shadowed eyes are tough too, chillin.

[chillin]

I know there is nothing I can do

[Kraellin]

well, i tried, but it changed things a bit, so might just be better to leave them alone.

[tommy3.0]

Her face is what is really giving me a problem too. Whatever coloring method they used really made the image smudgy. This is the best result I got scanning. The JPEG artifacts are not in the original scan. I assume they are just from me shrinking it down and "saving for the web". Thanks for the efforts guys. You got a nice amount of detail. More than I did. This is the most difficult image I have worked on so far. Its one heck of a challenge though.

[Kraellin]

yes, shrinking always tends to induce those .jpg blocks.

also, there is some evidence i can see in the image to suggest that her eyes may have been looking downwards, such that you'd not see the eyes but only the lids.