This photo was approximately six hours of restoration. I started with the background. A solid background is the easiest to repair. After repairing the cracks there was discoloration and tail-tail signs of the restoration in the background. So I used a fill with very little opacity to help blend the background. This would not be an option if the background had any sort of pattern. Solid background are a gem as a result. That's where the easy part ended. In the most severely damaged part of his hair I had to use a healing patch from another cleaned up portion of his hair that matched as closely as possible. Then blending is makes it look normal.
The rest of the restoration was pretty straight forward healing and cloning, keeping a close eye on shadows and lines that need to be maintained. Then a little selective color adjustment and some added film grain and I have a completely restored school photo of my dad.
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