Airbrushing in photo restoration? Don’t Do It!
Does airbrushing have a place is photo restoration? Personally, they do not go together. Photos and airbrushing are from different time periods, airbrushing is a relatively modern technique whether it is done with an electronic or traditional airbrush. Every photo has a character made up from the grain within the photo, the texture of the paper, and the aged look after years of handling. Don’t expect me to airbrush over this and take away what history has provided.
Many eastern restoration artists use this technique as a short cut to removing or covering up damage within the photo. Once this smooth finish is applied to part of a photo there are two directions the restoration can go. The first is more airbrushing to ‘improve’ other damaged sections, thus the whole photo takes on a smoothed artificial look or the second where the initial airbrushing has the original photo texture and grain matched in to blend it seamlessly and thus keeping the character and correct historical feel. Which would you prefer?
Order a restoration from a dot.com site and the likely-hood it is based outside this country and most likely of eastern origin. Make sure you examine the website before and after photos and it will soon become evident whether the airbrushing has been heavily used. If their samples are too small to see what is going on it is likely they have something to hide. If you would like your photos to be accurately restored and not modernised and plasticised then stick with someone who cares about photo restoration, like us!
Image-restore.co.uk photo restoration with care. A place where your photos are truly restored, retouched and revived.