Tips for enhancing an old photograph?

Question

I recently found an old class photograph from 1915, and I have a relative somewhere in the picture, but it is really hard to make him out. Does anyone have any tips or programs I could use to try to view the picture properly?

Haha, this might sound a little weird, but I have seen on TV how they can zoom in on a picture, and then clarify it so that they can see something specific, like a license plate number or something like that. But when I try to zoom in with Microsoft Image Viewer or something like that, it just becomes all blurry. So I would appreciate any help I could get.

Here is the picture ... http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ar/county/greene/stonewalsch1915.htm

Answer 1

There's any number of good programs.  The best is of course Photoshop, but for a lot less there's PhotoImpact Pro and others.  You can also download Picasa, a software from Google, for free http://picasa.google.com/index-new.html and it will let you do the basics (contrast, brighten, darker, shade, playing with the tone, etc..).

You'll want to scan it at high resolution, the bigger the better.  I have a lot of old family photos that look just incomparably better after 2 or 3 minutes work- you can suddenly see details that have been lost for 100 years- and I use cheap programs.

ps- I have a date tonight (that's not something I type very often) and am about to leave, but if you'd like me to I'll download that and play with it and repost it somewhere.  Just let me know.

Answer 2

here is my attempt at it.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1454/...

Answer 3

walk to the photography store pay 100 bucks wait a day walk back to store and pick up new photograph

Answer 4

The viewer is just for viewing.. and limited editing.  I just got gimp, which is a free open source photo editor, that looks darn good. I used this to change resolution on some pics to send them.. don't know how that would work to enhance "up". I love free anything.  

My only tip beyond that.. Be certain to do your scan with the original, name it something unmistakable, and move to a safe location on your drive (even cd or floppy).  You can now open and play with the image all you want, but don't use the same name for saving.  In other words, protect the original.

Sometimes if you crop the pic 1/2 way, it will make much easier to see.

Answer 5

It is a great picture.  I would take it to a professional shop to see what they could to.

It could be that the original was not very good in the first place and you may not be able to fix it.

Good luck.