still learning

[jd3wolfe]

My brother-in-law gave me this cool photo to work on. It is not a bad original. Needed little repair but the sky had dark gray areas around the sides. I have tried to learn as much as I can scouring this forum, watching YouTube, etc. But, I'm still not very confident about what is a good contrast, brightness, and especially, sharpening. I would appreciate any suggestions you would like to share with me. Thank you.
airmen final.jpg

[Doug Nelson]

It looks good to me. Some blacks seem to be blocked up (missing detail because too dark) but with these old photos that could be in the original.

If your desire is to make it look like a well-preserved print from back then you might want to lessen the contrast a bit. But that is purely subjective.

I am seeing some halos, which generally means over-sharpening. Take a look at a border between a light area and a darker area, look for a tiny bright line along that border. That is a halo, an artifact of the sharpening process.

This may very well be how you did it, but my goto technique for determining lowest and highest values is to use the shadow and highlight eyedroppers in the Curves or Levels dialog. Just make sure you're clicking on something that would have been actually black and actually white in the real world of the subjects, not just on the physical old print.