Photo Restoration

A little break from the chickens and the garden to share something that is very special to me. I've been going through some of my moms albums gathering old photos that I want to scan and keep. One of my favorite albums is full of photos of my Dad's family when he was a little boy. I love to look at the ones of my grandpa. I never knew him. He died four years before I was born but I have heard many stories about him from my Dad over the years. I'll be sharing some of those over the next few weeks but today I want to share one of my uncle.

In the bottom of a box I found a very old negative. Negatives were very different 50 years ago, almost like photo paper instead of the clear film we see now. This is a scan of the original that I found in the bottom of the box.

My Dad could tell that it was a photo of my uncle, his younger brother who passed away 15 years ago from a heart attack at the age of 44. My first thought when I saw it was "What can I do with that in Photoshop?"
I brought the negative home and started on my restoration journey...
First, I scanned the negative then opened it in Photoshop CS2. I knew that negatives were flipped, a mirror of the actual image, so I hit the transform/flip horizontal button. Then I clicked on Image in the tool bar and picked the Invert options. This changes photos to look like negatives so I was hoping to get the opposite effect and it worked.
I now had this image.

Looking much more like a photo and showing more detail! That blue haze had to go so I changed it to a greyscale image making it black and white then adjust the contrast to give it more depth.
Then, the tedious part....all those scratches and specks and he had a big line right through his cute little face! Using the clone stamp tool and the healing brush tool, I spent about an hour working on this photo and I can honestly say that the money I spent on Photoshop was worth seeing the final image of my uncle, especially since I can now have his wife who loved him with all her heart and my Dad an enlarged copy of this precious photo made as a keepsake.

You can click on the photos to see a larger copy and more details. I just love the wagon full of puppies and that little boy smile! I don't think it could be any sweeter!
If you have Photoshop, what do you use it for? Web design, photo editing/restoration, making siggies/blinkies/buttons? Tell us! I'd love to find even more ways to use mine!