Restoring a Rubbish Image (Help Me :()

[Lyra]

Okay, So as most of you know im a massive HDM fan. As such, I got given a rare picture of Lyra (picture was taken from one of the pre-release books.)

Only problem is there are scan lines on the image, and that it is a really low res picture.

I was just wondering if any of you have any hints on how to remove noise from an image, and maybe make it look at least a little bit better. I've attempted work on said image, and here's the result so far:

Original Image:


My edit so far:


I know it's far from High Res, and as such, have any of you attempted to do something like this before? I really want to try to fix this image...

[Woodsprite]

Well, here's what I came up with:





First I despeckled the image twice, then blurred the edges of her face and clothes with a soft brush, around 60% strength.

Then I used the spot-healing tool over the wider areas of skin, blurring those parts over again, and played a bit with the burn tool on her nose ridges.

Then I focused on the eyes, sharpening them until they stood out more, then blurring the edges again so they wouldn't fight too much with the rest of her face. I played a bit with the burn tool again around the edges of the eyes, and sharpened the eyebrow region a bit more.

Then I focused on the hair, sharpening it where it looked too blurred away, and blurring where it looked too sharp. I also blurred the background.

I tinkered with the clothes a bit more with the blur tool, making them look more naturally soft, though, looking back at it, I know I missed many areas (I only took a few minutes).

Finally I adjusted the brightness/contrast to make it look more radiant, and that's about it. Sounds like a lot, but only took about 5 minutes. Yours looks better (and sharper) in many ways, but this is what I came up with, anyway.

[Lyra]

Wow! Yours is definately more natural than the original, and mine, however mine only looks softer because I changed the contrast and blurred the face multiple times. It's a very awkward image to work with Definately gives me something else to work with. Thanks!

(any other edits are welcome, i need as much as possible )