The Possibilities of Image Restoration

I'm just barely beginning to learn some techniques for image restoration, but already what I'm finding is amazing. Here is a scan of one of the old instant pictures:


It's very dark -- perhaps the flash didn't go off. But with only a few seconds of cropping and adjusting of levels, you can see a lot more:


There's a person there, hiding in the shadows! It is probably Wence. It's the kitchen of the house at 765 Highmeyer Road in Harborcreek, Pennsylvania in around 1978, undergoing kitchen remodeling. I think Wence did most of this work, although I can't recall if he had contracting help or not.

Here is an instant photo that has undergone severe color degradation. In particular, the cyan is blown all out of proportion. That seems to have happened on a number of the Kodak instant photos:


I know very little yet about the best way to do this, but I'm finding that there is tremendous room for improvement and a lot of information in these images that I can't really see, but the scanner can:


And this is before doing any detailed cleanup whatsoever.

Finally, here is a shot from the trailer on Big Bend Lane -- my favorite restored image so far! Although there is a lot more that could be done to improve the surface texture, and color.


The possible improvements in black and white images are also amazing... more on that later.