This is a picture of my parents in Germany just before they left to come here to the US when my dad was getting out of the service (mom is italian and they met in Germany when dad was stationed there). It's one of the very few pics we have of them at that time and I want so badly to be able to fix it up a bit and be able to make copies of it for them and the rest of the family.

I have tried a BILLION times over the last couple of years and can't even count the number of hours spent trying to use photoshop to fix the photo- but it's just not happening. my problem is that a lot of the areas that need to be fixed are ones with facial details- and a lot of other details- things that i can't just smooth or recolor or smudge to fix.

Well, I'm really not expecting it to happen, but it's worth tossing it out there just in case- there are lots of talented folks here so I wanted to ask if anyone might have both the talent and the time to play around with it a bit? I don't even know if it can be done unless it's just completely drawn/ painted over and re-created by an artist...

So here's they are- the best mom and dad EVER

I think its way out of my league ..maybe Buddy (Willys Dad) is pretty good...

I wish my uncle wasn't so busy right now. He's a photographer, and incredibly good with photoshop. I remember when we would take people's eyebrows off lol!

I will look and see if I can find my AUTO restore CD. It's really good and it does it with just one push of the button. However I haven't seen the CD in two years- and not sure it will work on vista.

I can ask my brother if that is within his abilities tomorrow, he is what I would call pretty talented Personally I don't know if he can or not, but I'll find out tomorrow after he is back from school.

I could take a kick at the cat (I was a photojournalism major in college) but I'd need a bigger file... the bigger the better. This one is a bit pixelly to do a restoration on. Any chance you still have the original??? If you could get it scanned at a high resolution then you'll find people have a lot more success with the photoshopping.

Thanks for the responses to my shameless plea for help I'll definitely try to get a file of the pic with higher resolution.
The only other thing I could think of doing is printing it out and using ink or pastels or whatever seems to work best and give it the look of a hand-drawn portrait. I might be able to pull that off. I can usually sketch pretty well from any kind of picture- it's using color, blending, shading, depth, etc that don't always work out so well That may be my weekend project if my carpal-tunnel woes don't prevent it.
I love doing stuff like this- just wish I had the creativity and artistic talent to do it well!

Let me see what I can do.

Yay- I got a much better file to work from. I don't know why the heck I didn't think of doing that before- would've probably saved me a bunch of wasted time and frustration!
Here it is-
Nope- not working. i don't know why it won't upload now when i had no problem before. may be a problem with the network here at work because of the file size. i'll try to figure it out and post it soon.

I'll be looking for the other file. Evidently the original photo is a lot smaller that the scanned version because the pixels broke up pretty badly.

I did work with this one some. I had to resize it to get some of the pixels back together and I did some cloning, clarifying, covering, etc.

BTW, I don't know why the bath tub in the sky is there but I left it there.

Click to view attachment

Is that really a bathtub? OMG that is to funny!

Well I personally think the bath tub in the sky adds character to the picture Actually i think it may be a tear in the original.
Buddy- I can see improvement in the original (yay) so I'm gonna hold my breath as I provide the better file. I wasn't able to attach it before so just in case it doesn't work again I put it on my shutterfly site at www.myfids.shutterfly.com/61. Hopefully one way or the other it will be available.
Crap- the file is supposed to be close to 2M but from the site it only downloads around 400k. I'll come up with something.

Still no luck at all. If anyone is still interested in trying pm me for the file- i should be able to either email or pm it to you. Thanks

I've been working on the one from shutterfly on and off all day. The faces (the most important part) are the most damaged part so the hardest part to do anything with.

Here's all I've been able to come up with so far.
Click to view attachment

Have you tried a photography store.
We have places here in OZ that restore pics.

I must say QPdad you have done a great job.

Tricia

Yeah the bathtub is an imperfection in the picture, if that was a space craft it would explain why aliens are always naked.

Actually, I'm wondering if the "bathtub" is something atop that pole that you can see below it.

Darn- you've spoiled the bathtub mystery for us. It was much more fun to think it was a bathtub full of naked aliens (um, thanks amoz- I always wondered about that). Now you've gone and made it too clear

I am so impressed with how much better it looks- Buddy, you ARE da man! If you aren't sick of playing yet I'll email the 1.68MB file to you- it appears to be too large to upload or pm on the forum.

I've been working on the "print it out and use pencil or colored pencils to artfully re-create the pic" idea... 2 words: IT AIN'T WORKING! (ok- 3 words)...

It looks so much better well done Buddy..

I just sent you a PM. It'll still be hard working through the original damage but I'll sure give it a try.

I'm glad you found someone to help you I think Buddy is doing much better than anything my brother could do...and he probably wouldn't have the patience to try the little dummy