Retouch Photo of Chuck

I've been working over the last two days in order to get all of my best friend, Chuck's, photos restored and retouched for his funeral video. 

Yes, funeral homes make videos now and put them online for the family to view. 

Anyway, this particular picture gave me the most trouble, but is - by far - the best retouch photo that I have EVER done to-date. 

First, the photo was taken from Chuck's Facebook Albums at the permission of him, before he died.  He knew he was going to die quickly, and had funeral arrangements in place to make things easier on his fiance.

The photo was downloaded to my laptop very small at 72ppi (as FB photos are wont to download), and very much as you see it on the left ---> Grainy, faded, discolored from time.  The original photo was no where to be found, unfortunately.

The right photo represents my finished retouch, cleaning, and restoration of Chuck's Navy Service Photo.

I used Photoshop CS4 & CS5 in order to do the initial balance of color, contrast, despeckle, and other much needed effects before I could work my mojo.
Then, when most things were balanced, I imported the photo into Corel Painter IX, and digitally painted parts of it that still had terrible grain distortions.  Chuck's brilliant blue eyes had turned black from the balancing and contrasting, so I had to literally repaint them and parts of his face, eyebrows, and hair that did not want to clear of grain spots. 

I also cut out the original background and replaced it with a new background as provided from:

At this link: sirius-sdz.deviantart.com/art/…    (JPEG #04)
Thank you, Sascha!

I then, tweaked the texture to match the background of what had originally been there.  I couldn't fix the background.  It was beyond repair to use, and would have been too frustrating to digitally paint the entire thing again.

Luckily, I can paint photo-realistic faces even when I don't have a photograph sitting behind as a main layer.

Finally, I  brought the digitally painted photo back into Photoshop for some more tweaking and balancing.

I added the watermark to this version, but the original completed retouch, which was given to Chuck's fiance - did not have a watermark. 

I am not only Chuck's BFF, but I am also the graphic artist of my company.  When people who work for my company, or those who own my company need digital work (any kind of digital work) done for them, they always, always turn to me.  As strange as it seems to have to retouch your deceased best friend's photo, this brought the much needed closure in my life for him.