Of course, it also depends what the photograph's owner wants. If they want to retain the original integrity of the print in its entirety, it might be better to leave the image as it is and accept the damage. On the other hand, if restoration is required which preserves as much of the original integrity of the image, then clearly work on the image should be minimal, just attempting to restore the damage and leaving the fundamentally undamaged parts of the image unretouched. And there are other people who want to be brought closer to the people or places depicted in photos by wanting all the blemishes from the image removed and the image honed and polished.
And then there is the issue of colouring the images which would never have been coloured originally. I must admit that when I started restoring, I didn't like the idea of colouring images in this way. However, nowadays, I just love trying to bring the image to a standard which can show how the scene might have appeared to the audience at the time. I love the way colours bring these long-gone people back to life, put flesh on their bones, bring us closer to them. So when colouring old photos I try to imagine what the photographer might have seen on that day. So to my mind, colourisations are not really restores, but more attempted re-creations of the original scene.
