Fixing mottled look on face

[Jannz]

I want to thank you for all your help with this project. Work and family committments dragged me away for a while but finally, after many hours work, I have something that I am not too ashamed of. The eyes were the hardest bit. I did this as a favour for a friend of my mother's. It was important to her that the face remained as true to likeness as possible. Without some of the wonderful advice from here I would not have made it this far.
I am attaching a before and after.
Thank you.

[tom60634]

I've been working on some World War II photos from China.
I've found that trying to enlarge photos that were originally 1 and 3/4 by 1 and 1/2 inches in size can be a fool's errand. (The reason for the small image size was that cameras were forbidden in certain war zones, and the cameras that were smuggled in were tiny.
With that in mind, I did some quick work on Edna's photo.
I found that if you kept your image size expectations to a reasonable 2 and 1/2 by 3 inch (approx.) print, a reasonable edit can be achieved in 20 to 30 minutes.
I primarily repetitively used the median and Noise Ninja filters mixed in with some curves and abusive settings in the Shadow/Highlight filter.
I believe I've reached a reasonably workable first stage edit that could be enhanced further.
I tried to give the edit a light summery feel, which is sometimes hard to do when trying to disguise image flaws (shadows can be so handy when hiding cracks and scratches).
The hardest part for me was determining where Edna's golden locks ended and the background noise started.

[sohel951]

I even tried using Portrait Professional but it didn't seem to like working on the black and white photo.
I would appreciate any help you are able to give me.


Photo Restoration

[Jannz]

Originally Posted by sohel951

I even tried using Portrait Professional but it didn't seem to like working on the black and white photo.
I would appreciate any help you are able to give me.

I took the advice given earlier in this thread, to re-scan in colour. I found Portrait Professional worked better when I scanned it in colour.