Scanned-in photo from World War II - what to do???

[MtnMan]

Just today, my family received a gift from one of my distant relatives in the mail: it is a hardcopy printout of a scan of an old photo of my grandfather from the Second World War, taken while he served in as a Navy Seabee.

The photo is typical of the time, black & white. The image is as clear as can be expected. There is a problem with the photo: the image was obviously scanned by one of those consumer-grade in-store kiosks and it has horizontal lines across it, much like an old CRT television picture. I scanned in the image with my old Epson scanner.



I scanned the photo in with my old computer (specs below) using Epson Scan. The newer computer that I just bought this past spring will not run the older scanner software. So at this point I'm scanning with an old scanner, running old software, with no access to newer stuff that may (or may not) offer tricks I could use to clean up this image.

Here are my current specs...

OLD MACHINE (primarily used as a file server)
iMac G4 1.25 GHz (Fall, 2003 vintage)
2 GB RAM, 300 GB hard disk (installed 2005)
runs MacOS 10.4.11 and 9.2
Adobe Creative Suite 1 installed, with Photoshop 8
EpsonScan 2.7.7

NEW MACHINE (main workhorse)
late-2012 iMac 2.9 GHz Core i5 (13,1; slimline DVD-less version)
8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD
runs MacOS 10.8.4 ("Mountain Lion")
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8
(Adobe Creative Cloud apps currently installed, but idled, awaiting money for re-activating CC subscription)
iLife 2011

SCANNER
Epson Perfection 2400 PHOTO, connecting via USB 2 cable


Epson stopped supporting the 2400, so there's no way to install, much less run, EpsonScan on the new iMac. A friend who works in I.T. (and knows both Macs and PCs very well) said that I should buy a copy of VueScan, third-party software that will run on Mountain Lion and probably be better than EpsonScan. I doubt, though, that improved scanning will clear up this image.

Is there anything I can do with my weird mix of hardware and software to clean up this image?

Thanks in advance,

The Mountain Man

[Miking]

I only have my iPad so it wont be the best but here is what I did to your photo, you could probably get far better results with Lightroom or photoshop on your computer.

The first thing I did was use a dodge/burn tool to soften up some of the hard lines, then I turned down the overall brightness while sliding the contrast back just a hair. Obviously if you could get your hands on the original image it would be better, if you can get ahold of your family and get them to send you a decent scan or even take a good picture of it especially with a good camera in raw mode you'll have much more to work with.

[MtnMan]

Is there a way to trasmit attachments via private message on this forum?

[Fat Crip]

Is there a way to trasmit attachments via private message on this forum?

You could upload to something like DropBox and pm the link.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[MtnMan]

Miking has been corresponding with me via private message and direct e-mail. I now have the modified image.

Thanks, and hopefully someday soon I'll be digging out another, later image from the war to scan in and display in this thread.