An Impressive Restoration

Sue has a photo, about 1" x 2" in a tiny frame. It shows Sue's grandmother adjusting Sue's mother in the stroller. Pearl's twin brother sits in the adjacent seat, and Sue's Aunt Elsie is about to take the twins on a stroll. It was Aunt Elsie who somehow had the photo restored — poorly restored — long ago. I assume that she also had a larger copy made and gave this smaller one to Sue. It sat in a kind of oval frame, which is why the corners look as they do.

In addition to the print being tiny, not much larger than how it appears above, neither the photo nor scan was of high quality. In point of fact, I had already improved the tonality a bit, but I didn't keep a copy of the lighter, original version.

Some time ago, I enlarged and adjusted the image as best I could, but one has to work with the pixels (dots) that are there, and, unfortunately, poor Uncle Syd's facial features were blank, so there was nothing there to enhance. Below, is the result after doing what I could using manual methods as well as calling upon AI to fill in the corners. It is better but a little disappointing.

There was nothing else that I could do, so I just filed it until this weekend, which is when I came across a tutorial using Adobe's latest and greatest AI tool, called Gemini 3 (with Nano Banana Pro), and I kid you not about the Nano Banana Pro part. 

I went back to the original scan, not my adjusted version, and asked Gemini to Restore and Remove. I was almost stunned by the result. The tonality is so much better, and the noise is gone.

Unfortunately, grandma and the dog were also gone, so I tried one more time with just the command to Restore and omit Remove. Presto! Grandma and the dog were back, and Uncle Syd was miraculously given facial features. One doesn't know how accurate Syd's face might be, but Sue thought it looked plausible. Of course, Sue's mother's face was also enhanced very nicely from the original scan.

I remain pretty impressed by the results including the next photo, below. I won't show multiple versions of this one, but it was the faces that were significantly improved.

Sue holds her mother's hand (left), her best friend doing the same with her mother.
People did dress up to go out in those days, circa 1950.
Sue's mom likely made the outfits for both girls.

Unfortunately, when I tried to process one more photo, Adobe informed me that I had reached my limit and had used all of my free trials for Gemini 3. You see, this heavy-duty AI-ing must go to Adobe's mega computers, so they charge extra for the service.

I did not wish to add to my monthly subscription at this time, but there might come a day that I do because the results are pretty impressive. Meanwhile, I can still do some AI processing on my device but not with the Nano Banana Pro version.