Playing around with old photos and photoshop

So over at the Pioneer Woman Photography blog that I read, they've posted a new set of photoshop actions and I wanted to try them out on an old picture I have of my grandfather. He died when my dad was 4 so I've never met him and, as far as I know, this is the only photo of him that I have. When my mom sent it to me, it was all faded and he was just as small part of the overall composition of this photo that was quite small in and of itself. You didn't really get a good feel of him from the picture, so I played around with PW's actions and tried to get a different feel of a picture that was all about him. First, the original picture:


The first thing I did was use the Dim The Lights action from her second set to try and get rid of some of the washed out feeling and bring in some more contrast:
Then I used the 4x6 crop in photoshop to get a picture that was mainly him (because I want to print it out on a normal 4x6 print at a photodeveloper).

Then I used the Define and Sharpen action from PW's first action set to bring out a few more details:

Finally, I used the Quick Edge Burn action (also from PW's first set of actions), to get sort of a haloed effect around him. Overall, I kind of like how it turned out:

I also tried it without the Define and Sharpen action to see if there would be much difference and you can see with that action some of the shadows are a bit crisper than without (but I'm still debating which way I like better):


I sent all of the steps I've tried here (and a few others) to be printed and I'm excited to see how they turn out when actually printed when I pick them up tonight or tomorrow night. I'm a bit worried about pixelation from trying to blow up a small part of a small photo (less than 3x5, maybe 2x3.5?) into a 4x6, but after Debbie finally did find the photo (all of our pictures were in various boxes after the move to Boston), she very kindly scanned it at 2400 dpi before sending it to me, so I'm hopefull it won't be too grainy.


Next up, I'm finally going to post my Day in the Life pictures I took over a month ago.