Sharpening Help

[ameerat42]

What? - Yes, you are reading it right. I am asking for some pretty specific help.
Normally PP-ing is nothing much to me, but I have been given a photo of a road
trip in Greece in 1962-or-3 (48-bit scan at 1200 dpi of a 6x6 Ektachrome), but the
main subject - the person who gave me this pic to fix - is OOF! He took the next
pic of his mates and that's OK - they're all in focus.

Short of using the likes of Topaz AI to sharpen it (by deconvolution methods) is there
some readily available way using Photoshop or GIMP to sharpen the area in question?
I have tried the GIMP Resynthesizing method but it hardly does anything. Other methods
in both these programs yield horrible results.

Ta.

Here is part of the picture I scanned showing the GIMP steps...
144317

[nardes]

I just punched the copy/paste in PS CC through 2 iterations of Topaz AI Sharpen.

It seems to have worked better on the feet/sandals?

Cheers

Dennis

[ameerat42]

Ta, Nardes. I fear you are saying that it's a lost cause :(

I also noticed that the feet scrubbed up better with my attempts as well.

(At least the subject himself took a better shot of his mates :rolleyes:)

[junqbox]

I read an article a couple of years ago where the image is converted to LAB colour profile and it often gave better sharpening ability, I fear though this image may be too far out for any sharpening 'tools'.

[ameerat42]

Ta, JB. I will read up about that and give it a try. I managed something "acceptable" at low
magnification, and certainly better than it was.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmm, that was fast! I did a search on "sharpening using LAB color"
and there are heaps of refs. This is the first one:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=sharpening+using+LAB+color#kpvalbx=_AxcEX5zyKJmU4-EPt5O4wAs21