This old photograph was probably taken in about 1870.  It is unusual in that the photo is on a metal sheet rather than paper.  The underlying metal is showing through on the right hand side and looks like rusty.  The photo is very dark as if covered by  soot (silver iodide I think) and this obscures the details. The original is quite small, about the about three inches by four  inches. It has been scanned at a higher resolution resulting in significant magnification of the original image.
	After simple modification to alter contrast far more detail is visible to the human eye - even the imperfections are more visible.  At this stage no modification has been made to manually remove imperfections such as scratches or spots.  Click on the photos for an enlarged view
	This is the original photo of George Douglas and his family.
	The contrast of the photo has been altered and imperfections "manually" removed using PhotoShop.  Note the spot from the mouth of the girl and the spot on the right side of the boys jacket have been removed.
	This is a photo of a hand written post card. It has been scanned at high resolution but is still difficult to decipher.
	I have "cheated" and have added to the photo to make it more "readable".  I have moved some well formed letters from parts of the photo which were still in good condition and inserted them in places where the writing was not visible, or had been obscured by fungus or mold, or had just faded.  This is a more extreme modification than the preceding two examples.  Modifications such as this must be done judiciously, if at all.  The original photo has been fundamentally changed. Although in this case fairly benign and with good intentions, in some circumstances it might be considered forgery or at the least deception.  The grey circles indicate areas which I have altered.  There are numerous other areas in this photo with subtle and not so subtle "modifications".