Blotchy shadows - fixable?

This is a photo I pulled off FB and tried to fix, but the shadows are all blotchy. Orig. poster said it was a scan of a slide. Was that an error in scanning it? Preventable? Can it be salvaged? I tried some color replacement with Photoshop ... fail!

Sadly, there is little you can do here. The image data for what is really there is simply lost. It was either lost on capture, on the scan, or in jpeg compression - or all of the above.
The best easiest way to deal with this is to simply use the blur tool to smooth out the edges of the blotchy areas so it's at least consistent and doesn't draw your attention. The alternative is to spend a lot of time on it creating false image data such as copying skin from other photos and blending it into the photo.

You might want to give ACR a try on this one even though it's a jpg. Spot exposure increase and contrast decrease over faces can help.

The image looks horribly posterized, almost like low bit color. Bummer.

kirk

By the way, if it's not your image, POTN rules require you to post a link, not to post the image directly!