I scanned in a few old photos that I'd like to be able to print as large as possible and still have as clean of an image as I can get. The photos are not great to begin with. They're pretty small and my scanner is 600dpi. The raw image ended up being 2662 x 2126. I'd sure appreciate some recommendations of how I might get the best results out of the scans.

Converting to a pencil sketch or painting would be cool too.

I'm embedding a 5mg compressed png and attaching a larger 12meg 7zip'd file of my Grandpa. This photo captures him perfectly, as he sits in front of the fireplace and winds himself up a smoke. He was born in 1894 and lived to be 97 years old.

a moderate enhancement, using:
- gmic smooth wavelet threshold 2.5
- gmic color_balance no-stretch (out=new layer)
- merge softlight
- duplicate
- merge screen 50-60%

Nice job dinasset. It would be nice to get some more of the noise out of his face but with such an old print I guess it is pretty hard to do without ruining the effect.

yes, Molly
with old photos imo it's better not to clean too much
they should keep an "ancient" atmosphere

My try...

Hi Tux, what a lovely photo. It captures your grandfather in a moment of total concentration on the task of rolling a cigarette. The quality of the photo shows it age. I presume it was taken late seventies, middle eighties. The colours are turning and there is a definite shift to red. Personally, I do not think that much can be improved without major loss of image definition. By that I mean that by getting rid of the noise and blur, you are introducing pixels that were not there before and you will end up with an unnatural image that belies the the image as it was intended, (a snapshot of your grandfather in a a very intimate moment)
Have you thought of just leaving it as a small photo so that the imperfections are less noticeable and frame it so it shows a little picture but draws the observer. Eg a smaller photo with a large matte in a nice steel frame.
I have lovely b/w photos from the sixties and seventies that were only 2 X 2 inch square. Trying to blow them up is not possible.
Having said that, Dinnaset and Molly have made a nice job of some very subtle improvements to your original and have mostly retained the original snap.
I will have a go at it as well, but like Dinnaset and Molly I will not deface or alter the intent of the photo.

one more,

nice outcomes, Molly!
GT may choose what he likes better, but you should tell him the steps you followed in order for him to replicate them on the other photos

Thanks dinniset, but I tried so many things, I lost track. I used some of the smoothing plugins from GMIC, levels, brightness and contrast, and several more trial and error steps.

What a nice photo. Here's my try for a Norman Rockwell look:

You made me re-install my very old copy of Neat Image Tux. lol

This one still needs some tlc, but hopefully I was able to fix the focus for a better look anyway and reduce the noise too (for print purposes anyway). Might tackle a more artistic interpretation shortly.

http://imageshack.com/a/img540/7859/ibb2lY.png



edit:

The hirez PNG file was taking too long to load so now just linking and showing a lowrez preview.

That is really good, is neat image an app? Looks like it does a very good job.

Neat Image pro has a PS filter interface, but I purchased the home addition over 12 years ago so it's a stand-a-lone. Probably I should upgrade; newer version has new features, but the old NI is good enough along with other tools that I have Molly.

As a side note, I threw a few other programs (Postwork Shop Pro and DAP) at this one to get the abstract paint result.

http://imageshack.com/a/img540/7562/gnrm1G.jpg

Pretty cool, thanks Lyle.

Nice work Lyle on both versions. I really like the artistic version . A bit like Cezanne! I think it would be even better if you could make the person less "blocky" (smaller strokes) Perhaps with a "loose" selection or two layers superimposed with masks.

What a beautiful result, Lyle

Like wbool63 said the impression of a Cezanne!
Such warm colors.

I really like it very much

another attempt



(kept .xcf, just in case...)

Wow! Thanks for all the great outcomes.

I really appreciate the effort and the excellent comments/suggestions. This will give me some direction while I prepare to print. I think I'll just take several these to a kiosk and print out a few variations, at various sizes and pick the ones that look best for further duplication.