Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for the ‘restoring old photos’ Category

Ed. Can you explain the cost of a photo restoration?

Neil. Certainly, but don’t think of it as cost, think of it as investment. You are preserving your memories. Price should be a concern, yes, but not the primary one. You have made the decision that your photo needs restoring, so I am here to help you transform it.

Ed. But don’t you just hit the “filter” button and it’s all done?

Neil. No absolutely not. Take a closer look at the image you are sending me to restore and be honest with yourself. There may be an obvious big rip or scratch, but look closer. Is the surface of the emulsion all scratched and dull? Is there a spider’s web of fine scratches embedded in the emulsion filled with fine dirt? If so then I have to remove these as well.

Ed. I can barely see the fine scratches why does it matter?

Neil. If I ignore them It may be ok to print to a typical 6×4 inch sized postcard as you wouldn’t see them. If you wanted me to make an enlargement then the fine scratches would also be enlarged. You would then have to pay a second time to have them restored and removed.

Ed. Fair point, but how do I know you have done anything at all other than remove the rip or tear?

Neil. I restore what damage there is, you may not appreciate it at first but just compare the original to the restored image. If it’s a digital file you can compare the before and after. You will see how there are subtle differences in the tones, the shadows are richer and the highlights stand out more, edges are more defined, its punchier and less flat than it was. Nearly all of the flecks of dust, scratches, stains and faded tones are restored.

Ed. Nearly all?

Neil. Yes, sometimes if the image is overworked it can look “restored”. This is not what I am about, I don’t airbrush back in areas like some restorers. I tend to use the tone and textures from what’s there and restore it. I simply cannot bare the mix of badly matched, soft smooth-toned backgrounds and the gritty texture of an original photo, it just doesn’t work and certainly does not look natural.

Ed. It sounds like you are very passionate about your work, will you take on anything?

Neil. I will be honest, in some instances there is not much that can be done. I will always discuss beforehand what can be achieved and what expectation can be met. Sometimes it maybe that there is very little detail there to start with and all there is to do is a simple clean up and try to recover some tone and contrast. Others can require a complete rebuild of the lighting. By this I mean where there was very little tone to add back in light and shade, to give the feeling of depth. This doesn’t work for all images but most can be rescued.

Ed. I’ve heard that some people provide inkjet prints, do you do that?

Neil. No, heaven forbid no. I appreciate that there are some very good inkjet printers, but I am old fashioned I guess and trust the tried and tested chemical colour process. Your photos will be printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper for 100 year fade resistance, or so the manufacturers claim.

Ed. That’s reassuring. Thank you for explaining.

Neil. You’re very welcome.

Restoring photos in your local Shire 

There are many way to change a photo’s tint using photoshop. I have made this short tutorial to show you how to change a photo from black and white to sepia using three different methods, each with similar results but with subtle differences.

We can use this image as a test image.

Method 1. Change your photo to RGB mode . Select from the top menus – image/adjustments/photo-filter.

You will get a colour box pop up. Choose a sepia colour.

Choose a fairly dark one

and then use the slider to increase the density.

Final result.

Method 2 This method using ”colour balance”. From the menus select image/adjustments/colour balance

Change the sliders with the radio button “shadows” selected so that you dial in around 20 red and 20 yellow.

Then do the same with the “midtones” but around 15 red and 15 yellow. You can tweak these setting to your own preferences.

Here is the final result. This method does not alter the whites in the highlights.

Method 3 Using a colour fill layer. Select from the menus, layer/new fill layer/solid colour

Then select “colour” in the blending mode box.

Select a nice sepia colour

and you are done!

I hope this helps everyone and just choose a method which suits you best, if it were my choice I would go with method 2

Repair my photo from Image-Restore.co.uk

I have just made some scans of random images from the old album to illustrate some of the points made in my previous post.

Family portrait in doorway

“Family in the doorway”, is an example of where the scanning light reflects on the silver within the print and glares back as a bluish tint, upper left. (The silver was used in the chemicals to develop the photos). Isolation of the blue within editing software can go some way to removing the cast and once the foreground is balanced with the background then this could make a nice family photo once again.

Old photo of a soldier

In the previous post I talked about sepia images, this example, “Soldier boy” as I have called him is a sepia toned postcard style image around 3×2 inches. His gun is as tall as him with the bayonet in place. It may be that this sepia tone has come from aging many years in a frame by a window, the sun’s rays causing damage over time. It may be that it was tinted sepia or it could be that heavy tobacco smoke helped with discolouration. I would approach this image by improving its contrast and tone, removing dust and dirt and trimming its edges. A nice touch would be to isolate the text and re-assemble the whole thing into a “new” postcard.

Mess Staff 1939 Portsmouth

The image I really marvel at is this one titled “Sergeants Mess staff Plymouth 1938”. It measures around 5 x 2.5 inches This is an excellent example of the clarity of the old format negatives. These postcards were sometimes printed directly from the negative by contact printing. Simply laying the negative on the photographic paper and exposing to light. This meant that the resulting image was an exact copy of the negative and the details from this type of print was astonishing. Depending in the camera the film may have been projected onto the paper but the enlargements were fairly small as materials were still relatively expensive but as in the case of this image the detail is still excellent.

Mess Staff 1939 Portsmouth

I have taken a small portion from the larger scan to show just how detailed they can be. You can see how bad this chaps teeth were, which is a testament to the quality and methods used by some of the photographers back in the 1930s.

Photos such as this can produce huge enlargements and a satisfying restoration normally results. These are my favourite kind of restorations and the more I look into them the more details I see. I restored a old naval photo of the 80 odd strong crew on board the ship Nasturtium and it wasn’t until the image was scanned in and cleaned up did I notice the ships mascot, a dog in the arm of one of the crew.

Thanks for reading.

Carrying out photo repairs throughout the UK