Remove Film Grain

In this tutorial we will show a method (one of many) so that you can restore old black and white photos with flaws and grain and make a really professional job.

Before anything else we will create a white background around the photo by "expanding the canvas". To do that select the Crop tool, choose all the photo, press the Alt key and expand the borders horizontally and vertically. After that press the ok button on the upper toolbar.

1. We remove the yellowish colors of the image by selecting Image > Adjustments > Black and White
Reds and Yellows to 140
Greens,Cyans,Blues,Magentas to -100
2. Create a layer copy to work on.
3. Choose Filter >Blur >Surface Blur. Choose Radius-->about 8 pixels and Threshold-->40 levels. See the result and experiment with these parameters to remove all the grain.
4. Because now the photo is a litttle blurred we have to show some details of the photo. We do that by adding a new mask to the layer and with black color in front and the brush tool (50% opacity) . Brush only the eyes,nose,mouth,front hair.
5. With Alt+Ctrl+Shift+E we create a new layer with all the previous commands. Now we are going to remove some scratches from the face. So we choose the Blur tool and brush on the problematic regions.
6. To delete the letters from the left of the photo we can do a lot of things. We will try to paint them. So first of all we create a new layer. After that we choose the Brush Tool and with the Alt key we choose the background color that we want to fill the area and we paint the area. Choose opacity 100%
7. Finally go to Adjustments > Levels and move the grey pointer so that you will make more intense the black and white colors.
Voila...