Wow, yeah….. WOW

Kalym wanted me to restore this wonderful old photo of his grandfather who had just lied about his age to enter the army. Unfortunately the photo had suffered badly from fading and had area of surface damage where the emulsion layer had fallen away altogether.
The first place to start restoring this old soldier was to isolate the silvering in Photoshop by making a mask from the an adjust blue channel.

Then using curves I was able to bring back these silvered areas and smooth out the overall tone of the image. The yellowing was removed by using a B&W adjustment layer and additional selective adjustment curves layers were used to pull out the details in the floor and the stand on the right. The damaged surface areas were filled in using the clone and healing tools. Finally a dodge and burn layer was used to tidy up here and there and finish the photo restoration.