I'm trying to restore a photo for a friend. I'm very new to this....sooo I wanted to know what the best way to go about:
1. removing the dust and specks from scanning the photo
2. repairing the torn corner
3. removing the cracks
4. bring the picture back to life again?

I know I have to do lots of cloning. Any advice?

Here's the photo..

you have a lot to work with!
yes a lot of cloning and healing brush will fix most of it
recreate the edge is a little difficult but not impossible
to get rid of dust just go to 'filter > dust and scratchs OR despeckle'
use them sparingly as it will blur photo a bit
also adjusting the levels will bring it back to life

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Dani B.

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Good luck, you've got a lot of work to do. I've restored a lot of photos for my mother and know that you will get to be very well acquainted with your clone tool/brush. As Dani said, go easy on the dust removal, despeckle as it will make you photo look like plastic if over-done. I found myself cloning and cloning and cloning even tiny little places to get rid of dust. Just be patient and save often.

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Did you know that I blog? Gypsy Gold Studio

WOW you do have a lot of work! Best of luck. I don't have any suggestions but I am curious as to how you will repair the torn corner. I will check back to see any suggestions on this part. Please post the repaired version of the picture when your done. I think others would like to see as well!

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if you would like some help I am pretty cheap just pm me

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Dani B.

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When you save, save as a .png. If you keep saving a jpeg, you lose an amount of detail each time you save, so after several saves, you will see your file size go down. With this type of restoration, you want to keep as much of the detail as you can.

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Realy?????????????? I had no idea... i always save as a jpg when i do things.

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Help I've fallen behind and I can't catch up!

Past the 1/2 way point

Oh yes.. jpg is a lossy compression format. Now.. if you don't do anything, you will not reduce photo by saving.. however, if you do something...... yes, you degrade the file.

That is a big job... I would charge a few hundred to restore that and it would probably take me about 20 hours of work.

I recommend that you submit it to the folks over at dpreview's restoration forum board and let them give you some advice... some might even buck up to the challenge and try to fix it for you for low cost.

Good Luck!