These are my first two serious attempt at photo repair and restoration. The files named ps are from a photoshop tutorial I did in GIMP, and the files called a3 are an old family photo of my dad and his sisters when they were kids. These were done primarily using level adjustments and clone stamp / heal tools.

Just put the a3 files together in the reply.

Nice going!

Pretty good, Steven8

Just one point: there is still a bit of paper-texture showing through from the paper the photo was originally printed upon.
(Had the same problem myself.) You can try to reduce that with various techniques, but in this case I think the simplest is to use wavelet decompose (http://registry.gimp.org/node/11742 ; see also Pat David's tutorials).
Simply decompose, turn off visibility of "scale 1" layer (to reduce the paper texture) and then do Layer>New from visible to get this:



That leaves the photo a little blurred compared to the original, so sharpen it with Filters> Enhance > Unsharp Mask...



If you find that a bit too sharp, just blend with the unsharpened image above (adjust blend to taste).

Hmm. I'm not I see that much difference between my original, and your altered image. Although I do prefer the unsharpened image for sure. I'm not quite sure I understand all of your instructions:

use wavelet decompose - found that, no problem: did not see much change in my original

Simply decompose - do you mean Colors>Components>Decompose: this creates a new decomposed image.

turn off visibility of "scale 1" layer - where does the scale1 layer come from

Layer>New from visible to get this - I know how to do Layer>New from visible, but what layer do you mean

Also: to Wallace...Thanks!

Filters> Generic> Wavelet decompose...
That generates 6 (or more) new layers in your image (or a new image) labelled "Wavelet scale 1" to "Wavelet scale <n>" plus "Wavelet residual".
Turn off the visibility of the layer labelled "Wavelet scale 1" (which is the finest level of detail in the image) ..that will reduce the paper-texture in this case. (If you look just to the right of the girl's head, you will see the paper texture diminish when you turn off the visibility of that layer.)
<Layer> New from Visible
This will effectively re-compose the image into a single new layer but without the finest detail.

Hello Steven, I like your contributions but then I am not a professional.
Like to dabble with restortation myself

ps Welcome to GimpChat

Thank you, Sallyanne.

JonTait2 - Now I can see it. My error originally was thinking my Layers window was active when I was looking at the Undo History. There was only one layer! Doh!

Also, now that I see it right in front of me, where I can turn on and off visibility at will, I truly see not only the difference, but the improvement as well. I still have not found a method of sharpening I feel helps the image, but I am happy to have learned a new valuable technique. This why I came here.

Thank you!!

Yeah, if you're getting into photo restoration, the Wavelet Decompose can be a real gem.
It won't help in all cases - that depends entirely upon what "nasties" you have to get rid of.
But, in many cases, I find that any given nasty is only represented on one or two "scale" layers and they can often be reduced/eliminated simply by brushing/erasing on that layer or even just turning-off the layer completely (as in this case).
So it's always worth trying.

Excellent advice. Thank you, sir!

A couple more.

And another one.

My grandmother. I really do like to maintain as much of a feel of the original image as possible. All done with the heal tool and one jot of the clone tool.