I am attempting to take an old washed out photo of my mom (baby), my grandmother (holding baby), great grandmother, and great great grandmother and fix it up a bit. However I am relatively unsure of how to restore a photo. Other than the auto-correct functions I am at a loss. I've been googling photo restoration tutorials but they all seem to be for really damaged photos.

Anyone have any advice for me or a good tutorial?

original...


and auto-corrected version...

That is an awesome picture! So many generations!

The auto correct seems pretty good... except for the noise. Sorry, I couldn't be much more help.

I'll have a quick go at it and tell you what i done.

I tried using the "sharpen" tool, though that just made a huge mess.

Here I've used the auto-correct, as well as adjusting the colors and contrast to make it not so blueish...

It seems better, yet something is still missing.

You might consider this a little better, but it was, as you know, a dreadful print to begin with.

I had a go, the original isn't great and i'm only using my thumb pad on my laptop as i'm not home yet.
A little rough around the edges but i think you get the idea.

It's definitely not an easy image to work with.

I am curious though, as to how YerPalAl and Sonic3 went about to achieve those affects.

First thing is to resize the image, nothing worse than working with low resolution images.
The rest comes down to using layer masks to adjust certain parts of the photo, one mask to adjust the Hue and satuation of the skin areas and another for the dress areas.
Another layer mask to adjust the levels etc
You then keep building up layer mask adjustments until your happy with the result.
The good thing about the layer mask method is that you can go back to each layer and make adjustments at any time.
My PSD had about 12 different masks all adjusting different parts of the image.

The noise is a big problem with this image, sharpening just dont work at all, i tried sharpening using the overlay method (more control) and then softened the photo with a slight surface blur.
Its not perfect but its not too bad.

That's a great image to do an oil or acrylic painting! I may just give it a go for you.

Adjusted the curves and reduced the brightness...



Will make a tutorial if there's enough interest.

Larger scan would help a lot.

@ badcop.

Here's the best I could do...

Thanks all!

I am going to try out your method Sonic3.

Rey I am working on getting a larger scan.

@ badcop!