My first attempt at restoring a photo

[wonderland]

Here is the original photo



Here is the photo in process.  I would like some help in restoring the skin tones and how to get the hair back to it's blond color. 

[Mhayes]

Hi Wonderland,

Welcome to the forum and we are happy you have joined. You really have a hard first photo as this one is not going to be an easy fix. Plus, you also have the honeycomb texture of the photo showing through. What makes this a more difficult is that the colors look like they have faded through age and it is hard to bring them back. I first did a Levels Adjustment and moved in the sliders for each channel. On mine her hair looks better, but overall the photo was too yellow, so I then tweaking some of the colors to bring the yellow down. Yours is better in her arms, but mine is different in the color of her dress which I show as more green. You are picking up more blue like in the dress and in the whites of her eyes. In order for you to give more color to her face you would really have to guess and colorize as there isn't much to go on.



Normally we ask that you not replace the background from the original, but in this case there is nothing much left. I added a neutral color, but that may cause problems too because it will need some texture and that is hard when the rest of the photo has the honeycomb pattern.

If this one proves to be a can of worms and this is your first test photo, don't hesitate to ask for another photo as this is not an easy restore.

Thanks,

Margie

[Hannie]

Hi Wonderland and welcome to the forum.

Thanks for posting your first OPR restore, you sure picked a hard one.
I agree with Margie that there really is not much to go on as for colors and detail.  The hair seems to have 3 shades of blond and I wouldn't know which one is the real color.  As there seems to be some red damage over the whole original photo my guess would be that the red in her hair is damage too.

You replaced the background so it would probably be a good idea to get rid of the honeycomb texture in the rest of the photo?  FFT would be good and easy tool  for that.  (there are several topics here on the use of it)

Here I did the FFT and used the healing brush to clean up the mid part of the face hair and background.  I also added a little skin tone to the face and arms.
(this seems like a photo that will not really look spotless after it is done)

Hannie

[wonderland]

Thank you both for your responses to this post.  Perhaps I did pick a photo that too difficult for me to fix. 

I will follow your suggestion on returning this to Bambi and will look for an easier photo.

mb