OT: Image Restoration

A trail buddy presented me an interesting project for a house remodel.  He found this old image in a library - the library scanned it for them - and I spent some time cleaning it up.  Lots of stains, spots, irregular fading, hot spots and dark areas.  I found it interesting how well the tones were mid-range with bright and shadowed areas becoming blown or black.

Some parts, like the dog, the bowl, and some trees, needed some painter skills.  Image cropped a bit to match 3x2 and help on comp.

Now that I went through the process, interested in any feedback to improve my technique next time :)

Here is my final image - this is actually reduced after being stretched to fit a 24 x 36" target.  The original follows.


 

The original

Karl, your clean-up and painter skills are right on as far as I cam concerned.  What a wonderful descriptive picture made all the better with your fine work.
 

Karl, you did a great job!  Only because you asked for suggestions: do you think you could increase the contrast or blacks in the 2 figures who were pretty ghostly in the original?  Mostly in their hats & faces (but looking at what you had to work with, you took it a long ways already).  Or maybe take it down in the others to match?   

Sandra - Thank-you!



Monika - Great observation.  I should probably gray up the black-looking clothing maybe 10% to bring them into the scene.  Heh, maybe a bit of both.

Nicely done Karl.

There is now a Dehaze option in the LR brush tool (most likely also available in Photoshop). That might help with the suggested local contrast adjustments.