Any way to fill in severe image gradations?

[phototechnic]

I have an image scanned from a negative that was very dark so there is a pretty severe display of the image gradations -it really looks solarized. The negative is destroyed so this is all I have to work with.

I believe that there must be some type of processing routine that would be able to interpolate these sharp gradations to essentially synthesize many more gradations in between. The only thing I have tinkered with is a blurring function which works but of course

destroys all detail.

I know I am not the only one to have this problem so I hope someone has a trick to apply.

Suggestions?

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

I'm not sure how much detail you will be able to get. The detail just isn't there, so to get more, you would need to add it or have software make it up...and I don't think there is enough to work with here. Maybe someone else will have something different to say about it.

 

[Chris Stegner]

You can try this:

http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/genuine_fractals.php

Problem is "Garbage In - Garbage Out". If it's to far gone from the start, it may not help.