How to repair a worn spot in a photo over hair

[vaughn_grisham]

Hello,

I'm editing an old family photo. The original photo had a worn spot over my great-great uncle's head. I would like to repair this spot. My efforts thus far have involved removing the color using the sponge tool and then using the healing brush tool, but it hasn't produced a good effect yet.

Tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Vaughn

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Duplicate the layer (Ctrl/Cmd+J).

With the marquee tool, sample some hair from the brother and/or father to use as filler.

[vaughn_grisham]

Thanks! How does one use the selected patch of hair as a filler?

[Nancy OShea]

With the Move tool.

[vaughn_grisham]

Might there be a way to select a patch of hair from the opposite side of his head, and then flip/mirror it?

[Abambo]

You can do that... but you need to flip it beforehand manually. Using layers, you could delete your temporary source.

[Nancy OShea]

The patch of hair on his right has more light reflection on it. 

[Abambo]

And IMHO, there is no need to do so. Nobody will see the difference between the one or the other...except if there are differences in the light. You could perfect the repair work by carefully painting the structure of the hair.

[vaughn_grisham]

Thanks for everyone's help. Here's how it looks so far. I would love to make the hair look more hair like...

Could it look better? I'm open to ideas.

[Abambo]

The hair looks great. I  would still darken the light spot behind the hair. And I would probably try to fix the grain in the dark areas of the picture. But as an overall old picture, I suppose you did what needs to be done. Great portrait with the technical limitations of the time and that adds to the charm of the picture.

Good work.

[vaughn_grisham]

Thanks! The Patch Tool works great for this, btw. Here's how it turned out using the Patch Tool.

Now, I just need to get rid of the speckling throughout.