Old wedding photo restoration and colour
A few days ago Barrie Warby contacted me with a plea to help him fix up his mother’s photo. It was in dire need of some wedding photo restoration. Unfortunately, it was stuck to the glass and heavily faded. He posted me his prized photo, carefully wrapped, still in the frame, glass and all! The restoration process began.
The wedding photo restoration process.
The image was stuck to the glass so I cleaned all the areas of exposed glass and air dusted underneath. After inserting some tiny foam circles onto the corners of the glass to avoid the “moire” effect or glass on glass, I scanned the image in high bit colour and in high-resolution. The image looked like a challenge straight away. The scan revealed heavy staining and detail loss where the dyes were affected by adhesion to the glass. Only one thing to do, convert to black and white and re-colour!
Old wedding photo restored in colour
I set about correcting all tones, stain lines and fades and corrected these by using the patch tool, dodge and burn, clone, and healing brush tools. Once I could see an even image, the contrast needed boosting with “levels” and the image “multiplied” on a new layer to give more contrast. This was masked out and selectively painted back in to give the image more punch.
The whole image was recoloured using separate layers, three colours on the brickwork for depth and realism. As always you can read about the colouring process in my colouring tutorials
Here is the review Barrie gave me when he received the image.
“The help and information I received were exceptional, the speed of service was excellent, once the payment was made it was less than a week until I received my photos and the finished product was amazing, 10 times better than I could have imagined possible and worth every penny. I would recommend to anyone thinking of using this company.” Barrie Warby 01/06/2013
Thanks, Barrie!
If you wish to have your photo restored and colourized stop by the main, colourize a black and white photo page, for more information on how i can help.