Many of these vintage photographs have the sepia effect. I have found that converting them to black & white is the way to go.

I spent a few minutes on your picture. Try this:

1. Open picture file
2. Duplicate background layer
3. Go to Enhance>convert to black and white

4. Open a levels adjustment layer above this, and gently work the sliders below the histogram

5. Merge down. You will have 2 layers: Background & background copy.

6. Duplicate the background copy layer and work on this. If you don't like the result, delete this layer and try again.

7. Access the burn tool, set exposure 5%, Range:midtones, then burn over the lady on the left in front of the barn, and other areas to suit

8. Finally sharpen a bit ---Enhance>unsharp mask  70, 0.9, 1

9. Flatten image
10. Go to Select>all, then Edit>stroke (outlne) selection, position:inside, stroke width=3px

Sorry, i neglected to fix the tear or crease on the left. This can be done with the healing brush.

I also have been scanning many very old photos and have another twist to the topic. I have found that most  old portraits, that were done in a studio, were originally sepia toned when my family member got them.   This has been the case since at least the early 1900's.   In fact, even my old high school photo back in the 60's, was done that way.   I scan everything in color, and then make adjustments to retain that slight sepia tone.   I think converting them to grayscale isn't appropriate in those cases.   However, in Tim's example, it clearly was a regular b/w snapshot and once all the levels, contrast, fixing, etc are done, I think it's OK to convert to grayscale.

Dick

The first thing to do is get rid of the colour.  I used Enhance...Convert to Black and White...Scenic Landscape and increased the contrast.  Then add a Levels adjustment layer with these settings:

to get this image as a starting point:

After that, it's a matter of painting with the Burn tool and using the Spot Healing brush as previously described.

Ken