calling all tmip, b&w help needed

[gary]

so one of the fire brothers asked me last week, could i scan in and enlarge an old photo for him, i said i'd try. it's black and white, his wife would like it printed to at least 5x7, or preferably 8x10. i'm posting the original, and my worked on lightroom version. i know some of us have better b&w skills than i have, so if anyone wants to give it a try, pm with an email addy, and i'll send the tiff scan

 

[ELinder]

Looks like a definite improvement, but the result is going to depend a lot on the printing phase. And hey, that lamp in the back is still in my parents' basement!

Erich

 

[zackiedawg]

I'm no B&W expert, but I'd be willing to give it a try - just for the fun of playing around with processing on an old photo. ; I recovered an old scratched and yellowed 2" x 2" wallet B&W photo of my grandfather in WWII, and made a quite decent 8x10 out of it for my grandmother...but that one took me days of working on it at 100% viewable, tiny section at a time, healing, cloning, and removing spots and specks, then reworking contrast and sharpness. ; E-mail on the way.

 

[zackiedawg]

Well it was fun trying! ; Smallish scan though, so not a ton to work with. ; At 200dpi, it'll yield roughly a 3.5" x 3.5" photo fairly clean - anything larger will have to reduce the dpi to pretty low levels, but might still get something usable. ; Here's my best attempt - I didn't run much cleanup NR on it - yours looks cleaner, I mostly just went a little heavier contrast to see what would happen: