Any ideas please?

[QuietJan]

Sorry for taking so long in getting back here. I had another person's photo I was working on to be ready before Christmas.

No I haven't heard back from her yet. Not surprising with the holidays and such. I think you may be onto something CJ. I've downloaded your photo to take a closer look at it. Thanks for the tip. I'll see what I can come up with using your method.

[QuietJan]

You have all given me some really good ideas and tips to work with. Yes I'm pretty committed to fixing this photo (maybe I should be committed...lol). I just hate to be defeated by a photo, just stubborn I guess. Thank you all for your input and I'll let you know how it ends up. Oh and yes the man is wearing wire rimmed glasses, I was told that by the owner of the photo.

Merry Christmas to all!

[LQQKER]

Happy holidays all

I applaud you for trying, however, I doubt if a logical end result can be obtained.
Knowing where the eyes and other facial features are will not give you an identifiable image, especially not one that would have value in reuniting ones attachment to someone that currently or once existed. Outline detail is only part of the equation. Highlights, shadows and character lines are just as important to an image to figure out the depth of given features that make us all unique. For example, if you were to construct an image having only placement of features the possibilities are endless unless you have other images of the same individual at various poses (brow, cheekbone, nose, character lines, etc). All of this information is necessary to associate the image to the individual.
Even if you had half of the face to work with and built upon this, you’d still be guessing. Most people are seldom recognizable if you duplicate a right or left side and combine since faces are not symmetrical. The little oddities are what matter.

To site an example; I have a program that does police composites, I’m sure many of you are familiar with it. In order for this program to be of value, the individual that describes the image must describe depth as well as dimensions in order to discern nose shape, eyes, cheeks etc., identification is otherwise hardly possible especially with only a frontal view. I guess my bottom line is, without more complete information, what’s the point?

[OlProfBear]

Still, bear in mind that there can be a lot of information hidden in the channels. I always scan in RGB (16-bit, these days) for that reason. Always worth a try.