last pic of mum dad

[andyrollins2007]

hi this is the only good pic my mum has of her dad and it was about 2inch by 2 inch when i got it . It would be great if some one could have a crack at fixing it as i live in belfast N Ireland there aint a lot of this people doing this type of work . i look forward to your help and support as i learn how to do this work for my myself

heres the original
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...nakes/gran.jpg

heres my attempt
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...akes/sofar.jpg

[mistermonday]

Andy, Welcome to RP! Not sure if you started from a photo or a scan of one, but the image has a large amount of color noise suggesting either a poor scan or someone has made a brightness adjustment to an underexposed image or scan. In any case the first thing to do is reduce the color noise with a good noise filter - I used Noiseware by Imagenomic. Next use the clone tool or healing brush to clean up the scratches and damaged areas. Then clone away as much of the shadow on the left side of his face / head.
After cleaning up the baseline image you need to sadjust the contrast. Here you can use a curves or level adjustment to increase it while at the same time lightening the face a little.
Belwo is a quick 5 minute example (no attempt at precision). With a clean high resolution scan, you should be able to get a much nicer restoration.
Regards, Murray

[albatrosss]

Could not get it sharper.

[Markzebra]

Andy if this is important to you, can you provide better starting image for everyone who want a try on this forum? higher resolution and if possible a better scan? or digital shot?

[zekeode]

Used gaussian blur to background, and adding noise back. You lose background information by doing this, but it add also more depth.

[Wolfman]

Here's my version Andy.

[unimatrix001]

used patch tool to fix imperfections. noiseware to reduce noise. duped layer ran high pass filter at 1.2 set to linear light merged down ran noiseware at defaults
faded setting to softlight. came up with this

[chillin]

I've done noise reduction in LAB, other adjustments using curves & HSL.

[RappScallion]

Nice one chillin!
What is LAB?

[andyrollins2007]

i scanned the photo as its the last one we have can some one recommend how i should go about getting a better start photo ! Just wanna say already loving some of your attempt thanks a lot.
This would be very important to my mum and i the better i can present it to her the happier she will be

[andyrollins2007]

ive had i good look at the original and its got all the speckles because i scanned the image at the highest it could be scanned and thought it might be the original that was dodgy .
I will be happy with wot u can do with such a poor photo

[mistermonday]

Andy, it is clear that there are dust specks on the original, however if you look at the image, particularly the background, there appears to be strong color noise which is not typical of color film. It appears to have been generated largely by the scanner. You can verify this by taking a mignifying glass and examoning the paper photo to check for alternating color dots.
The image is 1.68 inches on a side. If you want to print the restored image at approx 8 x 8 inches then you should be scanning the original at min of 2400 DPI. Such a scan will also make it easier to do the restoration. You could then upload the full size scan somewhere for members to download.
Regards, Murray

[chillin]

Originally Posted by RappScallion

What is LAB?

RappScallion, this thread will help

[andyrollins2007]

okay thats great will give that a go thanks very much

[andyrollins2007]

okay thanks for the advice i have made sure scanner is clean and pic and clean and largest dpi scanner will go to is 1200dpi the output i need is a square 320 pixels x 320 pixels (roughly 4 inches) heres is the pics thanks a lot.

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...pic1200dpi.jpg

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...es/webpic2.jpg