Photo Restoration Tips/Help

[Scorpio721]

This is a small project I just started, however it is proving troublesome. I am by no means a pro, I'm self taught through the many online tutorials and by trying things out myself in various software titles. I mainly use Jasc Paintshop Pro 9 (old but it is a excellent editor I been familiar with for many years) I do also have Corel Paintsho Pro X5 and some other lesser products.

Although I am looking to restore the whole photo the main section I would like to concentrate on is the top half between the second and third column. There are some scuff marks emanating from the organ tubes right the way across the wall and peoples faces to around the second column. I need to keep as much detail as possible with regard to the faces. It is a high DPI (600) as I needed to enlarge that particular section and scanning at a moderately higher resolution as far as I know is the only way to achieve this.

One other issue I have been unable to resolve is the reflected scanner light on certain sections of the image. I have tried numerous ways to resolve this from rotating the image in the scanner and blending the two scans to manually cloning from other parts of the image to correct the lighting. I am competent at cloning (I believe Adobe Photoshoppers call this healing) but there are times where no apparent source for the cloning can be found.
If anyone could supply any tips or indeed provide any assistance, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[edbayani]

Since you're competent with cloning, try a small brush to clone some portions and you can also use the dodge and burn tool. If you cannot find a good source point, why not select the right portion of the organ, since they are symmetrical and flip it horizontally, place it over the affected area using the free transform tool to adjust the size, skew to align it. and after it is aligned, use the layer mask to remove some unwanted areas, fine tune with levels to adjust the darkness/lightness of the layer before merging with the lower layer.

Image removed - please see post one

 

[Mike Singh]

Hi as suggested above u will have to do some reconstruction. You can also use a brush to paint over areas with marks or light leaks.

 

[oldgeezer]

I don't know how much work you have done on this but to get better detail I always Photograph the photos to be restored. Over the years I find they turn out a better starting point than using a scanner.
Shooting a raw image gives a far better result.

 

[Scorpio721]

Thank you for all your input. I've re-uploaded my photo on a different hosting site, hopefully this one is safe.

@edbayani
I'd pretty much resigned myself to the fact that cloning is the way to go however I thought I'd ask for alternate techniques, although your instruction is intriguing and I'll certainly try it. Thank You

@Mike Singh
Thank You, I will keep that in mind when I try to restore those areas.

@oldgeezer
I read that others have done this, however I would have assumed the quality is lesser. In this case though I did not try it as the photo is warped and therefore would prove very difficult to get the correct angle (directly face-on) without skewing. Thanks.

 

[Roger S]

We are still having problems here. The new link is (was) way over the forum guidelines of 1024 pixels on the longest side.

 

[Scorpio721]

How is that? - I've resized the thumbnail to medium (via Image Hosting Site): should be alright now.

 

[Roger S]

How is that?

The image presented by the link here on the page, was 1440 pixels wide.