From old to new again

First, I wanted to take a minute to say THANK YOU to all of you amazing people who've been so kind as to read my blog of late.  I trust you are enjoying it and getting something out of it or you wouldn't be here.  All the same, I want you to know that I REALLY appreciate your time and comments.  So blessings on all of you and thanks again.

Second, I've added a little poll today as I'm trying to learn about you and why you visited.  Would you take a moment to answer.  It's just to your left.

Third, today, I thought I'd just show a little something I did last week.  My father-in-law has a favorite photo of my lovely mother-in-law.  She was 19 and that was quite a while ago.  They've been married 44 years so you can guess on the math.

At any rate, some fading had occurred and the original now looked like this



That was the scan of the original.  Lots of damage to the photo as you can see, but its dad's favorite so we must dooooo something.  I took it into Photoshop Camera Raw and messed with it a fair bit, including reducing the exposure, adding the blacks back in, and using the recovery feature in Camera Raw.

And this was the result:



Next, you see all those icky brown splotches and funny spots.  Those are dust artifacts that the scanner sees, even though I don't see it with my own silly eyes.  You have to remove those with the healing brush.  I did that on each individual dot on the skin, hair, and blouse.  However, for the rest of the photo, I cut the body out with the drawing tool, feathered my selection, copied it and layered the body back over the top.  Then, I blurred the image beneath so those icky spots that remained blended into the background.

And this is the result:



Finally, I took it to color adjustment and messed with the color and then into RADlab to bring back some definition and smooth the remaining flaws.

And this is the result:



I have to tell you that I think it's the best thing I ever did for my Father-in-law. You should have seen him beam with pleasure.  It was about an hours worth of work but what a beautiful result!

Oh, and mom says the colors are just right.  Pretty cool eh!