I've been in photo restoration for over 15 years and have yet to find a plug-in that can "repair" any picture in its entirety and effectively. Depending on what you mean by repair (rips, tears, fading, water damage, etc) those all require manual repair work done. Whereas brightening, contrast, saturation, sharpening, softening, shadowing, etc, there are numerous plug-ins and scripts all over the net, including here in the registry. It all depends on what you mean by repair.
Other alternative methods for small marks and scratches is using the clone tool. For fading, there are several sharpening scripts, two that stand out and work very well for me is warp sharp and smart sharpen.
To increase the brightness and contrast of an image, you can use brightness and contrast located in the Colors menu.
Do you have the image already scanned? When scanning images, you get the best results when scanning at the highest allowable dpi (anything 300 dpi or better works best and totally depends on your computer's ability to handle the increased memory needed for it). Take care not to make it too big, or it will bog your computer down and hinder your efforts to work on it.
Do you have a digital copy of the image available for viewing?
I once posted a response to a similar query on GIMPtalk which provides an alternative approach. I prefer this approach because I am better able to visualize what is happening.
Repairs Are Manually Done
I've been in photo restoration for over 15 years and have yet to find a plug-in that can "repair" any picture in its entirety and effectively. Depending on what you mean by repair (rips, tears, fading, water damage, etc) those all require manual repair work done. Whereas brightening, contrast, saturation, sharpening, softening, shadowing, etc, there are numerous plug-ins and scripts all over the net, including here in the registry. It all depends on what you mean by repair.
they are old picture ,they
they are old picture ,they have small marks on them and fine scratches on them,and a little fading
Heal Selection works fairly well
Heal selection is also known as Smart Remove. You'll need this script (it goes in the scripts folder):
http://registry.gimp.org/node/15118
Plus you'll need to download the Resynthesizer plug-in (it goes in the Plug-ins folder):
http://registry.gimp.org/node/9148
If you have never downloaded scripts and plug-ins and loaded them into GIMP, see here:
http://www.mahvin.com/?p=1081
Other alternative methods for small marks and scratches is using the clone tool. For fading, there are several sharpening scripts, two that stand out and work very well for me is warp sharp and smart sharpen.
You can get warp sharpen here:
http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/gimp/warp-sharp.html
Smart sharpen here:
http://registry.gimp.org/node/108
To increase the brightness and contrast of an image, you can use brightness and contrast located in the Colors menu.
Do you have the image already scanned? When scanning images, you get the best results when scanning at the highest allowable dpi (anything 300 dpi or better works best and totally depends on your computer's ability to handle the increased memory needed for it). Take care not to make it too big, or it will bog your computer down and hinder your efforts to work on it.
Do you have a digital copy of the image available for viewing?
Mini-tutorial
I once posted a response to a similar query on GIMPtalk which provides an alternative approach. I prefer this approach because I am better able to visualize what is happening.
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28560