I have been using Gimp for some time to try to restore old family photos. I have had some success. I also have gone back over a few of the initial ones that I did as I have learned so much since my first attempts. I'm sure I still have a long way to go but I wanted to share an old photo of my mother when she was very young. Since I don't have many of her, I wanted to restore it. Since parts of it were not redeemable by me, I changed the background and her dress. Please offer suggestions.

Pat625,

You have done an excellent restoration. I wanted to try and produce something closer to the original.
The attached picture is only partly restored - much more required - but you can decide if you like this approach.

david.

me too, I decided to keep the "old photo" look
here is my attempt

What a nice lovely photo! I needed to do my poor try, too. Despite a great outcome done by a photograph master.

David, Issabella, Dinasset: I also wanted to stay with the original, but I could not get it clean. The white blouse was especially problematic. I tried using wavelet decompose and adjusted the layers but that did not help. Thank you for your comments and efforts.

Perhaps a little whiter blouse.

Not bad you guys.

Issabella, Happydays: Making the blouse and overall picture lighter did help!! Inspires me to make another attempt. Wallace: Thanks for your comment.

pat625: i think your attempt was brave and fun ! i like the idea of doing that to old photographs, colourising and adding new elements. if you want a better blending in of the new elements next time you do something like this you can use a small, soft airbrush on the layermask (assuming you work with a layermask) and brush it just along the edges and then smudge the edges a bit where they need further softening.

issabella, dinasset, david & happydays: you all impress! great job.

AnMal: You are right! I tried a little dodge and burn on edges but could not quite get what I wanted. I'll try your method next time. I have been thinking about trying layer mask more frequently.

You have done a great job at the recolouring. Something I am a long way from getting.
Had to have a go at this photo though

Great job Sallyanne! You got the original much cleaner than I was able to do. Which techniques did you use?

Nice one Wallace.
If you still have the layers, try an unsharpen mask before adding the frame.

I don't have the xcf file, but you're correct.

Thank you Wallace, that's very nice. I might try the unsharpen mask on one of my attempts. I keep trying new things!

The Unsharpen Mask is something that's often run as the last overall enhancement of an image. If I had used it on my enhanced image, the image would have been a bit more brighter/crisper.

Thank you Pat.
I didn't use any G'MIC filters this time.
For the lady - Hair, face and dress I used the tool . I have only just found this one to be really useful recently as it doesn't give hard edges like the straight tool does. Although I have found it has to be used where there is no colour at all and then you can smooth over the cloning with the heal tool. I did the same over the trees? so I didn't lose them and just used the tool for the background. I think I may have also used the filter pack to lighten the picture. I then gave it a vignette because some of the original vignette was lost through smudging.
I can still see lots more spots that I missed

Very nice Wallace