Young Man in Hat (Picture of My Dad)

This image began with an old photograph of my father that I came across the other day.  It shows him as a young man.  Although the photo is undated, I think he looks to be around 16 or 18 years old.  In any case, I loved the photo, but it needed a bit of a rescue.  One corner was bent and there were scratches and even ink marks on the face and the color. In addition, it was hard to see the hat because there was nearly no contrast with the background.  So I did some basic retouching and then opened the image in Painter.  I got rid of the pen marks with some digital pastel, and did some color overlay to clean up  the color.  Then I lightened the background just a bit so that the outline of the hat became easier to see.  Then I did some selective posterizing till I had the effect I wanted.  The last step was to crop the photo so that the image was centered.  It's nice to see my dad as a young man.  It's the same smile as always, and he sure did look good in a hat!  I am posting this today to remember my dad on his birthday. He was born on August 28, 1918, so if he were still around, he would be 98 years old today, and no doubt, he would still be smiling.