The main reason I disagree with altering the image is that the original image would have been 1-bit black and white, not greyscale. Thanks for being understanding about that.

As to it being similar to “unpacking” pixels:  
You’re not simply uploading and decoding information. In “packed” images, the information is written into the code behind the display. The intended data exists. In your work, the program is using a filter to make a best guess when you blur it by identifying the colors of surrounding pixels through the program’s algorithm. Then when you next sharpen, you’re using that guessed information to create new boundaries. When you next use unsharp mask, it becomes even clearer that guesses are being made setting strong new edges. After all, if you’d simply blurred the image, those sunglasses, pearls, and white sweater shoulder wouldn’t have strong outlines. You’re not “unpacking” any more than I am. 

You made conscious, selective choices about where the edges belonged, and how strong they should be. That’s not a bad thing if you’re reconstructing a damaged photo. 

In this case, the image was as complete as it ever could be. It contained no hidden information for you to retrieve. What you did was make a wholly new image. It’s probably closer to the source image used to make the image for the SE (except that photo may have been full color) but it’s not the image found on the SE.

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My apologies to those who pointed out that other Macs DID, in fact, have greyscale (and yes, even color) in ’86 (I was really freaking tired this a.m., completely miswrote what I intended, and do sincerely apologize.) What I can now confirm – that you all conveniently left off – is that Apple Mac SE did not have grey scale capabilities, and only had a monochrome display. My reasoning still stands. The computer being represented by the image would not have been available in a greyscale format. Providing an image from that computer in grayscale misrepresents its standard capabilities, and thus, misrepresents history.

But seriously, around 1980 I was building greyscale image processing systems for optics testing using Z80s and wire-wrapped graphics boards. Stuff that you couldn’t buy off the shelf.

Our eyes are particularly good at preprocessing images, finding such things as edges.  The original image is all edges.  With the signal to the brain highlighting all the edges, our brains have a more difficult time doing the image recognition.  All those edges distract our brains from the faces.

Blurring did a great job here of reducing the “noise” produced by our eyes, making faces easier to see.

With credentials like yours, you sure don’t need any Photoshop whizzes to tell you anything. Sorry for the lighthearted comment and comic!

I just wanted to see the image as a greyscale without having to get 8 feet away from it, which is what I have to do with a dithered image to get my eyes to deresolve the dots.

Well, I’m pretty sure the guy on the bottom right is in witness protection or something (hence the shades), so I bet this photo re-appearing is interesting to him!

The one thing that I would add, however, is that while it does not add detail and it looks the same at a smaller resolution, it is more akin to “unpacking” the pixels. After all, the b/w dithering is nothing more than encoding grayscale into a lower resolution, in terms of color space. Blowing it up and blurring it is somewhat similar to decoding that information.

It should be noted that you still haven’t put information back that wasn’t there. The rule still stands. What you’ve done instead is to allow the program to “fill in the blanks” logically. The same effect can be achieved by simply viewing the original image at a smaller size. (Notice that in your thumbnail the two images appear equally clear.) 50% scale would probably be enough to make this image comfortable for viewing.

Another question is if a person should edit an image for an article discussing the image being found. If the original image was produced in a dot-screen format, heavy editing such as yours misrepresents what was discovered. While people have become accustomed to being catered to with hi-def and glossy, full color images – not all images appear this way. The story above is about an image from 1986, when greyscale images for computers did not yet exist. The edit that you’ve provided may satisfy modern consumers, but it does not reflect the history of computer graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk