Advice on editing an old photo

[Victoria25]

My grandad only has two pictures of his father who died of prostate cancer at the age of 24 when my grandad was just 4. As my grandad is now getting old he is struggling to see the photo as it is quite small. I have scanned in the photo's and loaded them into photobucket. The photo's are both damaged. One my grandad snapped and then coloured in with biro! The other has a fold across the leg. I tried my best to edit them on photobucket but does anyone know a better way of doing it? They are very precious to my grandad and I am hoping to be able to get him a 7x5 photo without loosing too much quality.



The original


My attempt!


Any ideas?

[ladylola]

Photoshop does a really good job if you have it.

My OH did some for my mum which were really bad, creased and pieces worn away.
The only thing he had trouble with was replacing my Aunts nose which was totally missing. She ended up looking like miss piggy but thought it was great anyway. It would do a great job on your pic, but I think you have done quite well.

[stuffster]

I have a friend who restores old photos for a living - see www.acreativeworld.co.uk - i dont think she is very expensive, tho Im not sure what she charges.

[Victoria25]

Thank you, will take a look.

[Helen]

I could give it a go on photoshop if you like?

[Victoria25]

That is really kind of you, thank you.  I have inspired OH (well nagged a lot) to have a go and we downloaded 'gimp' and he is currently in the process of fiddling with it. Rather than waste your time I will see what he can do, he can be quite clever when he tries, and post up his attempts. Then you can judge them and give us a few more tips if that is ok?! Looking back at my attempt using 'paint' it is rubbish, why didn't you tell me!

[Helen]

this is done really quickly with your low res photobucket image so if you have a higher res image with more pixels then I could do more..honestly, it's no bother 

[Victoria25]

That is the best quality I have as it is scanned on a pretty ancient scanner! Just uploading the 2 OH has done.

[Helen]

and here's the other one...



but i'd like another go at that one cos it's not that good 

[Victoria25]

Just seen yours when posting this! Very clever!

[Helen]

yours look brill - slightly sharper as well which is because they're straight off your scan and not off Photobucket - your OH ain't bad!! 

[Victoria25]

He has his uses....editing photos, um.....

Thank you, he is very proud as he knows that you are a photo buff! He just asked how to get rid of the purple tinge to the leg of the single photo?

[Helen]

doesn't look purple on my screen at all - looks all sepia   he could play with hue/saturation to see if that makes any difference?

[Victoria25]

Thank you.