Toughest ones I've seen

[hellrazor]

I am trying to get these looking nice. These are exported from old videos and unfortunately this is as good as an export we get. No way of rescanning anything. I've tried every trick I know but nothing works.

[mistermonday]

Welcome to RP, hellrazor. The image is strongly blurred. I do not think you will get satisfactory results trying to sharpen it or use one of theavailable plugins. If this was on actual film, your best bet would be to scan that frame using a film / negative scanner. It it is video, there are some good s/w tools that will capture the frame, some much cbetter than others.
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

when you say from 'old videos', are you taking about something digital, something vcr magnetic tape or something even earlier like lazer discs? this could be important because each media may have its own capture and recovery method.

[klassylady25]

FFT filter
Smart sharpen
Changed to B/W

[philbach]

Well I used neat image to remove some of the grain. Then levels. I copied the layer using overlay blending mode and then sharpened the image.

[chillin]

Originally Posted by hellrazor

... These are exported from old videos and unfortunately this is as good as an export we get.

How many frames do you want to export?

[Mining Art]

Sometimes you just can't stop, after cleaning up the BW I put a little color in and used a favorite frame.

[byRo]

OK, I went a little too far....

(where does retouching end and imagination start?)

Rô

[philbach]

Ro I like your rendition. Sort of whimsical and nice.

[Enkay]

This might be a little off topic and it might already be what you're doing but... You could also "clean up" the whole video by exporting it as a filmstrip image file and applying the filters on every frame at once. You would then have a better quality video, and you could also choose between any frame you'd like if you really want to have a still frame of it.

EDIT: and I like byRo's rendition too.