In Photoshop fix dotted pattern from newspaper or matt photo scan

[Ken313635862xxi]

Using Photoshop v26.2 beta, I was able to smooth out the dotted texture of this sepia photo that looks like it was scanned from a newsprint. 

> Apply Black & White Strong Adjustment

> Apply Photo Repair Strong Contrast

> Layer, Flatten

>Remove Background reduced the amount of photo the tools had to work on.

> Filter, Neural Filters, Skin Smoothing, slide Blur and Smoothness to the right (this did not elimininate the dots, but it brought out some texture in the skin. You might even save and try applying this multiple times.

> Filter, Neural Filters, Photo Restoration (this is the key to getting rid of the dots, but 99% of the time this says Disabled temporarily. I don't know what I did, but I managed to get it to activate. I've tried to repeat this step and haven't been able to get it to work again, so you may have to experiment or wait.' I saved as a PNG and tried again and it worked, but the results weren't as good as the first time. If I figure out the trick I'll update this.

I tried using Extension plugin [Removed by moderator] but I couldn't get it to work properly.

[Ken313635862xxi]

I should add that it may look like I must have used some brush strokes or smoothing brush, but I didn't. I really can't explain why it came out so good and I'm not sure if I could get PS to do it again as the Neural Filter tools are real finicky.

[Ken313635862xxi]

The alternate technique that gets pretty close to this is:

Please follow the below steps that might help you:

1.    The first thing you want to do is scan the newspaper in at a very high resolution.(600dpi). Sometimes you will want to scan the image at an angle to help avoid as much of a moire pattern as possible. If it's a matt photo shoot the image with light reflecting at 2 different angles and blend the photos.

2.    In Photoshop, duplicate the layer and make it a Smart Object – not necessary to do both.

3.    Add a Gaussian Blur of 3.7 pixels to essentially merge the dots and create smoother gradients. This amount may vary depending on the size of the dots. 

4. You can then try the Neural Filters mentioned above to further smooth the face or restore the photo. I find Skin Smoothing tends to lose detail so be careful. I tried Photo Restoration and it restored parts of the face, but did pretty good, particularly at bring back the details for the eyes.

The attached photos is before I used any smoothing brush or blending to fix the chin area. 1) is the original, 2) just degausing, and 3) is applying the photo restoration to that.

[Ken313635862xxi]

I took the final photo from above and colorized using [Link reference removed by moderator]

[Ken313635862xxi]

The 2nd process above using degaussing combined with neural filter photo restoration and the healing brush to blend the neckline to match. I then colorized using [Link reference removed by moderator], which brought out the gold medalion and made it pop.