Digital restoration is a big topic -- it has its own book: <http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Restoration-Start-Finish-Second/dp/0240812085/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318265373&sr=1-1>. When scanning for restoration, the priority is to get as much information as possible, rather than to get as good-looking a scan as possible. And be sure to use the highest available bit-depth, because in serious restoration you're going to sometimes expand ranges much more than one does with a normal picture. Useful tricks I never would have thought of myself: Extra layers with unusual blending modes. Having a "hue" layer, for example, lets you paint over without losing the texture of an area. You can do that just as a brush mode, but it's great to be able to do quick approximations, delete things that don't work, and eventually go back and refine the things that did work into your final image, without ever having to go back and start over. You can clone and patch and heal onto a new layer, too, which again lets you do a rough job, go on to see how it works with other things, and go back and refine the ones that worked into a final version when you're sure. Layer masks are fantastic; and again they let you delay the boring detail work until you're sure it's necessary (refining mask edges mostly). -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
