Old Photo Restoration Help

[sm4him]

First some disclaimers:
1. This is not my photo. I've been given permission to share it, and am attempting to restore it at the request of the photo's owner (my best friend). Still, in view of TPF rules on the topic, I am sharing only a link to the original photo. If a mod wants to come along and give me permission to post the photo here, it would make life easier.

2. There's not much to work with. It's a smallish photo, no negative is available, and I have no idea how it was scanned. I am working on seeing whether I can get the actual photo and rescan it on MY scanner to see if I can get a bit more to work with.

So--yeah, I need some help with how best to restore this photo. Not necessarily looking for someone to DO it, but advice about how to do it, tutorials on specific restoration methods, etc. On the other hand, if anyone has incredible skills at this and just WANTS to do it, knock yourself out.

Back story: This is my best friend's mother (in the middle) and her first husband, photo left. On photo right is her grandmother--and it turns out, this is the ONLY photo anyone has of grandmother.
She'd like to get the photo looking as decent as possible, and then be able to print it as large as possible; she may also have someone paint her grandmother from the photo, but for now, the restoration is the issue.

I can do the basics, no problem. I can get rid of the lines and cracks, things like that.
BUT--she also would ideally like to REMOVE sleazy first husband from the scene. Nobody liked him (can you tell that by the sneer on her mom's face, lol).
I MIGHT even be able to manage that--I at least understand how. I've given it a quick try and I think with time and effort, I could do a somewhat passable (but not amazing) job.

What I *can't* do, and don't know if it's possible, given what there is here to work with:
1. Brighten the photo without losing some already marginal details in the people's faces.
2. Pull as much detail/sharpness/contrast/SOMEthing out in the grandmother as possible--just make her look as good as possible.

Any suggestions, step-by-step guides, tutorials, etc. would be appreciated!

 

[runnah]

Do you have it scanned at a higher resolution?

 

[sm4him]

Do you have it scanned at a higher resolution?

See point 2 in my disclaimers.
Currently, this is ALL I have to work with. There are exactly two copies of this photo in existence, the actual old photo and this scan. I *believe* it was scanned on a pretty crummy scanner--one of those "slimline" type scanners really meant more for fast document scanning.

However--I am hopeful that I will be able to get the original photo from her and rescan it myself by this weekend. So that might help some.

 

[The_Traveler]

r

 

[bianni]

Select areas and put them in another layer to cover the husband, I used quick mask for selecting and adjusted tone using levels, dodge and burn and used layermask to fine tune before merging.

 

[The_Traveler]

Now that looks good

 

[binga63]

 

[sm4him]

@The_Traveler
@bianni
@binga63

Thank you ALL so very much!! Those are ALL better than what I had accomplished. I did get the husband removed, but was really having problems with restoring the part of her arm where his hand had been.

I can't tell you adequately just how much I appreciate your taking time to work on this photo for me, and I know that my friend will be absolutely delighted with the results!! She's going to have a print made and give to her mother on Mother's Day, and then I think follow that up with having someone paint a picture of her grandmother from the print.

 

[BillM]

I'm not good at removal but i took a swing at restoration