Is this okay?

[battleaxe]

This is my first one of these.   Is this okay?  I took the white out of the small gray tree on the right but thinking they may be flowers not damage.  Otherwise is this Okay?

[Johnboy]

I copied off the original and did a levels adjustment which turned out horrible but it gave me a chance to look at the Channels. It looks like the green channel may be your best bet to use for your greyscale image to restore. You have more detail in that channel than you have now. The blue channel is darker but I think you will pick up more background noise.

Select the channel you want to use and do a Select All. Then copy the channel. Go back to Layers and do a paste. You may want to play with the blend mode also.

Johnboy

[schen]

These are tough ones.  There isn't much tone left in the copy. 

I would suggest:
1. bring the contrast of the foreground tree down and the left and right side of the house up.
2. the snowflakes on the trees to the left of the house are probably damanges.
3. watch out for the clone artifact (in the red circles).

[glennab]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried using calculations with these Historical Society photos.  You can combine 2 channels that work the best together and then use blending modes and opacity for fine tuning. When you get the optimum image, save it to a new file. I keep seeing tutorials explaining this process and recommending it as the best way to get an optimal grayscale image (in our case from which to start, at least).  If I get a chance to work on one (I'm hoping), that's going to be my first technique after doing what I can with "color correction."

GK

[schen]

Good tips, Glenna.  Unfortunately, these very old B/W photos are showing colors because of fading and incorrect white balance when copied.  I tried playing with blending modes and they did not turn out much difference.

[Atlantis]

I have never understood nor tried calculations but I did do several scrapbookphotos. I will upload a wip-series I sent to Margie a few weeks ago showing how I handled them in a new thread.