Little story about this photo, and why I restored it back to its original state, the best
I could do with what I had to work with. This little boy died in a house fire trying to
save his cat at the time the house was burning. I don't know all the details, but this
is the only picture his mother has of him. As you can see, it had been on the wall for
some time, before they decided to take it down and save it. The photo itself was a
8" x 10"

Here is the just of the process I did.
1. Used a camera to retake the photo to resize it for editing.
2. Created a Mask to even out the tone of the image, so the darker border from the
frame to match the rest of the image.
3. Used the cloning tool to remove all the spots and defects.
4. Remove the unfixable places.
5. Change the contrast to check everything a few times on a duplicated layer
to check for quality work.
6. Then change to a grayscale with toning and brightness set the way I wanted.
7. Then apply a light sepia tone to help with colors.



8. For the face I have to touch up the eyebrows, because they were to light.
9. Changed the background with a new style, with what was there, removing the
barely seeing clouds.
10. The I fixed the lower parts of field under the mountain.

Tip here: anytime you have a part of the image that is unfixable, you go and find it
on the Internet has use as a patch and blend it in.

11. Then I fixed his clothes, had to find a few things to correct them.



12. I started with the jeans first for coloring, by getting the colors from other jeans
for that type from images on the Internet.
13. Same with the shirt, look on the Internet for those colors any applied them
14. Then I colored the hands and face.
15. Next, I did the hair, which was a little tricky because of the far-left side and right side.
16. Colored the eyes.
17. The green field was painted in.
18. Colored the sky.
19. Adding small about of toning (shading) in places to make it believe-able.
20. Touch up colors in places like, the cheeks, non-showing shades to take as much flatness as
possible.

One thing I could not find on the internet to fix, was another cheek to match his face to blend
into to his right side to unflatten it.

Same with red eye, if there not fixable, go and find them on the internet.
Total time: about 40 Hrs.

Very nice Tea Mouse

Wow that's a good restoration.

A lot of work - but very impressive result.
Thanks for showing.

Great result. A few suggestions. The first is to use AI for these types of photos. As you mentioned, using a mask to correct the colors is fine in this case. Then you can try optimizing the original photo with AI (Artguru). Using this AI, blend the hair from the original photo into the result, as the hair looks a bit flat after using this AI. To easily remove spots and tears, 'experte.com/image-cleaner/text-remover' is a good option. Nothing wrong to use AI in your workflow. Then you can use GIMP to further refine the photo, adjust the colors and other things.

Luminar Neo 15sec

At the time I did this, there was no AI to help with the photo. I asked her about the eye color and the color of the shirt he was wearing at the time
that she could remember. That's why the shirt is red and blue. I do agree the AI did a great job and a better job than I could do. What AI did you use.
The shirt color of the character, I was able to actual find it and go with those colors. It would be easy to colorize those from what you posted. Thanks for the input.
Good or bad.