Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for the ‘photograph restoration’ Category

Some more challenging photo restorations of 2011, enjoy watching!

In order to make a daguerreotype, iodine fumes are used to react with a silver-coated copper plate to form light-sensitive silver iodide. The plate is then exposed to light using a box and lens or camera and the image developed using mercury fumes, before being fixed in a warm solution of common salt. This was quite a lengthy process and the exposures were very slow, as plate was not that sensitive to light as we know photography today. The daguerreotype process was very popular during the first half of the 19th century, is was soon after replaced with faster and less complicated but safer techniques.

Old Daguerreotypes had to be protected by a glass font and sealed to prevent the image getting damaged, The image itself is a thin coating of deposits on the copper plate and can easily be ruined with a simple finger touch. Think of the image rather like candle soot on a glass tile, a very fine power that can be smudged with the lightest of touches.

I recently restored a Daguerreotype for a customer of mine.

Old Daguerreotype Restored

Several scans of this beautiful little old Daguerreotype were needed. It measured around 5 centimeters tall and was encased in a red velvet and brass case, with a glass sealed glass panel protecting the image. The scans were combined to give the best image to start the restoration process.

5 popular and useful posts.

My photo restoration blog is growing all the time and sometimes too much to read all at once, for convenience I have collated 5 popular and useful posts.

1: In digital photo restoration there are many tools an artist can use to help with their craft. Restoring a digital photo is sometimes very challenging but restoring an original is something else altogether, read here Can you restore an original?

2: One of the most exciting aspects of photo restoration is surprise. You are never sure what you are going to restore next and this photo of a  1900,s Unicycle record is one which ill never forget and had a great story to go with it too!

3: Sometimes images come nearly as long as i am tall! These are normally panorama images, for some examples check out the post Can panorama images be restored?

4: Everyone likes to wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed but what if your eye photos did not turn out as you wanted them, you could try the retouching eyes post.

5: If all of this sounds like something you could do, you could find out how to get started in photo restoration by reading how to start in photo restoration