A friend asked me to repair a very old and damaged family photo from the civil war era. Gimp was the obvious choice. Here are the before and after images..

Before


After


It's not perfect but it turned out pretty good, considering what I had to work with.

It took around 3 hours to get this far with a raw repair. I had to do a lot of close up work by hand because there was so much missing. There were some tricky parts, like the face and the missing patterns table cloth he was leaning on. I wish I had a graphics tablet.

Here's the final image, where I tried to enhance and smooth out the background a bit but I couldn't spend too much time on the project.



My friend was pleased with the results so I was happy.

you did a very admirable job with that. It looks like an old photo and it would take a trained eye to see any repairs.

Repairing something that old would make me feel like I was treading on hallowed ground. Excellent job, GnuTux!

WOW is all I can say. That is fantastic....

Outstanding job, no professional service could have done better.

Thanks!! It was fun doing it. I'll bet some money could be made doing this kind of thing by putting an ad in the paper. It might get tedious tho.

Alas, I could have made a lot of money from what I know, instead I have 35 years of experience and mot much to show for it. I guess my priorities were in a different place.

I would have done the face and give up after 30 minutes. You repaired that practically perfect. The table cloth must have been hard.

I've done a couple for people, and I must say you did a pro job on it! Excellent work!

Isn't it cool all the things one can do with GIMP?