[Danie]

This is the only surviving photo from my soon-to-be in-laws' wedding. I have tried playing with it, but I just can't seem to get any good results. I'm using photoshop cs3 and would VERY much appreciate any advice!

[mistermonday]

The 1st bit of advioce would be to scan it rather than photograph it. You will get more detail and more accurate color which will provide a much better base file on which to perform the appropriate color corrections. You will alos not require a lens correction filter to correct the perspective as the photograph is not flat in the plane.
Regards, Murray

[0lBaldy]

Danie, Welcome to RetouchPRO,

Definitely agree with Murray... Scan it at a high resolution with all automatic stuff turned OFF.. You will end up with a very high quality restoration more like it originally was

Just a quickie but this is the best I could do with the picture of a picture version using this tutorial

[DCobb]

Welcome to RetouchPRO. Scanning is where retouching and restoration begins. For practice I gave this a try. How did the originals get destroyed? Does the photographer still have any photos on file? What were you trying to change in this photo?

dc

[Danie]

Thank you all for the replies! Unfortunately this is all I have to work with for now. My in-laws live across the country. If they need to (and it sounds like from what you are all saying they do) they can bring the original with them when they come for a visit next month.

DCobb, I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the pictures. I have no idea about the photographer as it was 30 years ago. I was hoping to bring back the original colors in the picture and fix the contrast, etc. I'm not sure how much of the blur is from the original and how much is from the picture that was taken of it, but I want to fix that too, if possible.

Well, it sounds like I definitely will have to think of a way to get them to bring the original so I can scan it. (I wanted to fix it up for them as a surprise...) Thanks so much for the help!

[painting4ever]

Hi Danie

Sometimes restoring an old photo is just not possible, if the photo
is really in poor condition.

An alternative is to use the old photo to create an oil painting.

We have received many requests by people like yourself who only
have a single photo which is in poor condition.
Our artists are able to transform these photos into oil paintings.

Below are some photos of oil painting from photos which we did. You can
also see the photo we had to use:

old photo to painting 1

old photo to painting 2

old photo to painting 3

old photo to painting 4

As you can see from the samples, the photos we had to use were as in poor or oven poorer condition than yours. So this is a possibility you can consider.

If you need any other information, please feel free to contact me, or you can
also visit our painting4ever - paintings from photo website and find out more about this process

[Dave.Cox]

I agree, there is only so much you can do with a photo in this condition. Still, I think you will agree, that this does look quite a bit better.

[philbach]

Well I think this photo can be restored nicely. You have plenty of white and some black to sample with the eyedroppers and perhaps you can use Image Adjustments/Shadow Highlights to bring out some of the background if you wish.

Scanning at a fairly high resolution will give you the pixels to twiddle with.

In your photo I just used a curves adjustment layer, clicked auto and used the eyedroppers to balance the color. I used neat image to decrease some of the noise