Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for the ‘Photo restoration news’ Category

People ask me, “I know you do photo restorations, but do you do photo retouching as well?”

The answer is YES!

We can match one picture to another so that they seamlessly blend, correct skin tones, slim waist lines and chins and smooth out wrinkles and blemishes and re-size noses.

You can visit the retouching faces section or just contact us for details.

Don’t be bemused by the all the photo restorations on the site, we can do all the photo retouching work too!

You have probably at some stage deleted some digital files from your camera memory card. Fear not they may be recoverable if you have not performed any further camera to card actions. The best thing about this is it will cost you nothing to recover them either!

PC Inspector.de is FreeWare. I personally have been using it to recover my deleted files for many years and thought I should share it with you. The software is called PCInspector but it also recovers or restores your photos from your memory card too. At the time I was using it allot, I was working at a digital camera company where this was a regular fix. The great thing is it restored photos just as many times, if not more than the leading, paid for software!

Don’t pay get it free!

NOTE: I do not offer technical support for this photo restoration software so please don’t email me about it. If the embedded link fails then visit pcinspector.de directly.

Don’t forget to wander round the rest of the blog for other photo repair and restoration tips.

Hi all

 I will be attending the Woking Family History Fair on the 31st October 2009. It will be held in Woking leisure centre from 10am to 4pm. If you wish to come along I will be just inside the door, look out for the banner. There will be loads of stall holders selling their services, postcards and books, so please arrive early.

 Hopefully I will see some of you there.

Neil

Some of you may have noticed a slow down in blog posts recently. I have been concentrating on quality not quantity of posts. Rather than churn out photo restoration articles with thin, pointless content, I am taking the slow approach to ensure that each one covers new aspects or expands on others. This way the value of the blog does not suffer. This approach is also a good one to take with photo restoration, take is slow and steady, rushing just blinds you with wanting to see that end result without concentrating on all the processes along the way.

Preparation – ensure both scanner and image are clean, decide the best resolution for the final reproduction, whether to scan with pre-set optimum settings or create a custom scan curve for any particular image.

Restoration – restore fades, correct colour balance, enhance tones, repair scratches and dust, cracks and rips and clean up the back ground. Sharpen using one of many methods and re-size file for different printing sizes.

Completion -  Choose print finish, whether to add a border, sepia tone or keep original colours or hand color the whole image.

There are many processes involved, its better to get them all right and then the quality of work remains constant.

So whilst there is a slow down in blog posts be assured those that will follow will be of the quality of those before.

Neil

Original photos are made from layers. Old black and white photos were often made from fibre based paper. The base papers themselves would have been made in paper mills and the top coating of light sensitive chemical based sulphates called “baryta” was then added to produce the photographic paper. Once exposed to light and developed the positive image is embedded in the “baryta” or emulsion. If this top layer gets damaged there is no way to build up the layer and replace it. You cannot add wax or pen or ink, nothing comes close to the original emulsion. If some of the fibres of the paper have come away, then what? These cannot be replaced either, you cannot simply glue down new ones! Even if it were possible to put back a blank filler into the hole, there is no way to reproduce the grain structure that was there in the original, or the subtle tones and shading of the original photo.

The same goes for  colour photos, the resin or solid polyester top coat cannot be replaced with anything, I cannot be built up and restored. If there was a way to do this that was commercially available, there would not be so many digital photo restoration companies offering their digital restoration services today!

Sorry but it is not good news if own a damaged photo and want the original restored.

Many thanks for sticking with the Blog! I know its a bit erratic at times with a photo restoration post here and art tutorial there, like anything it takes work to maintain it. I really appreciate everyone who takes time to read. The most popular post is the tutorial on making an eye in photoshop and not a photo restoration entry. As this is what many of you have been viewing I have added more art based entries to satisfy your thirsts. The next entry will be back on track with another photo restoration article.

Back soon.