Stunning

The skirt's the wrong colour.

profesional

amateur.

the hair vs background contrast is way off
the new face is smudgy and looks like she has been beat up
don't get me started on the hands

Compared to the original image, the color of the blouse looks so washed out.

tho old photo looks line a photo, the new one more like a painting, i think i will stick to the old one.

Keep b/w photos in black and white. Colorization is a cheap trick that does not represent reality anyway (if you are going to colorize it, you might as well paint it from scratch). An original black and white photo might at least look serene and authentic, while the colorized result looks fake (and is).

As for the restoration, there are a lot of advanced inpainting algorithms, cloning and patterning tools and so on, and the results are usually better than just smudging and manual painting. You can still go old-school AFTER the intelligent functions do their work. What this guy did removes more original information than necessary.

highly skilled, very natural.
still, i would call this "photoshop skills" and not "restoration" since he just replaced the left arm with a copy of the right one.. lol

I think he made someone's grandmother verry happy. Good work

I didn't like the colorization very much, doing it right is really very difficult.
The rest of the work is good and i liked it.

#7 Could you provide some examples of those inpainting algos, cloning an patterning tools? Are they implemented in Photoshop or are third party plugins?

I don't think the end result was that good, saw some flaws made during the restoration as well. But oh well...

#8 Wana see modern day restorations ... did this to my m8s daughters profile pic because he called her a moron for taking pics in the mirror, lol so we messed with her a lil.

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/3192/iwwk.jpg

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/1108/mdo3.jpg

(Ps this was done in 5min's as a joke and not my best work)

#4 I totally agree with this one. Looks like he got a lot of down votes from actual amateur PS users.
This guy looks like he doesn't understand the proper use of clone stamp tool; he changed the contrasts to the hair and background, but not in the good way, adding too much dark in places he couldn't handle. He left the skin tone dirty, didn't finish cleaning the face especially where the marks were leaving the impression of a beaten face, also the shirt is dirtier than before and yes, he messed up the arms, totally.
So yeah it's an amateur work.

Any better he would have brought her back to life, someone in the family would have been very pleased

#13 I'm an amature and I voted him up

Sorry but it's more like redrawing using a backdrop as a guide. If the shades aren't the same (those arms...?..) then it's not authentic, just redrawn