My previous post was a quick image of a Paterson contact printer made of Bakelite used for printing large negatives, which leads me nicely to this post. I restored two very large negatives recently. They were a non-standard size of 6.5 inches by 4.5 inches image below
Heat damaged large format negatives
When i held them up to the light the subject matter seemed to show buildings, hidden underneath all the damage.
Light through the heat damaged, large format negative reveals the image
Once scanned with a large format negative attachment on my scanner, I put it through a few processes to eliminate the colour casts and reduce the damage as much as possible, which revealed the image.
Large format negative with lots of heat damage scanned and made into a positive
What followed was a few hours of very patient wrinkle removal using a combination of tools, patch, heal, clone and spot heal with content aware selected. The sky was filtered to leave the original toning and grain match was applied.
Large format negative with heat damage restored into a new positive
The other one turned out great too!
Large format negative with heat damage restored into a new positive
Damage can easily happen to large format negatives. They have more surface area to damage than their tiny counterparts. Large glass plate negatives are especially prone to breaks or cracks. Many images of this type are not displayed or shown, perhaps not deemed worthy of a place in an exhibition. If you are a museum or historical society or archive and have images that are broken or cracked and would like to hire me to help see my special projects page for more information.