Photo restoration; is there a way to improve this part of the picture?

Hi!

Along with the great suggestion that @mystic_soldier7700 gave you above, here is something to think about as you are working on your photo. Our eyes are naturally drawn to things that are in focus and away from things that are soft or blurry. Whatever you do to the backgournd, I would suggest (unless the background is an important part of the image) to keep it soft, and keep your subjects in sharp focus. That way you can add emphasis to your image and your subjects. You don't want the background competing with the subject.

Let us know how it works!

Michelle

Hey, @sharp_observer0655. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. I'll help you figure this out. 

Restoring old images is a detailed process; there could be 10 other ways to do this. Here is a quick & easy way to achieve a good starting point that you can refine further. 

For any areas in the image where the Neural Filter did not work as expected, you can:

1— Make a selection using any of the marquee tools.

2— Delete the selected pixels.

3— Use Generative Fill without any prompts from the contextual menu to fill in the area. The result should match the context of the nearby areas. 

Let me know if this helps. Thanks!