Photo Restorations are essential

“Oh gee, I guess I’d better get this restored it’s looking tatty” – No, no, no! Photo restorations are way more important than that, they are essential, they may seem trivial at the time, but you are preserving an important part of family history, your family will have to continue on the memory for their family. If left un-restored the negative or print could end up just that, un-restorable and future generations won’t have that vital visual link to their past. So even if it’s a simple retouch and removal of a few scratches, or a touch up of a face or torn up, faded photo that needs a complete cleanse and restore don’t leave it, act now!

The first thing to do is to protect the image with acid-free tissue or paper to prevent any further damage by the immediate environment. Place your photos in a good sturdy album and don’t mount them using stamp hinges or tape, you do not want anything stuck to the photos to make it difficult to remove when you want to get them restored. Try using photo corners but try and find paper type if you can. If you have to write something about the photo try and write next to them not on the back.

Then get it restored, but don’t just get one print get two. The reason behind this isn’t always obvious. If you give a copy of your newly restored photo to another family member then it’s more likely you precious memories will survive for generations to come as you are not the sole owner. Far too often all the family’s heirlooms are kept in one place and should the worst happen, such as fire or increasingly these days flood, then all is lost. The sensible choice has to be two copies.

Secondly, get a digital copy too. It’s all very well getting the prints done but if you get a CD/DVD with your images on then you can keep a digital archive. Don’t just leave them on a CD though; if you upgrade your PC make sure you copy the CD/DVD to the very latest of backup storage. First, it was a floppy disk, then CD, then DVD and we are already into Blue-Ray and who knows what’s coming. Just make sure it’s on the latest media, in this fast-paced world you never know when your storage will become obsolete.

Finally, if you have one why not upload it to an on-line photo-share or online storage space, you can then share it with the world if you want and let your relatives know it’s there. With the massive uptake on creating and investigating family trees and your files online, well indexed and labelled will enable others who have family connections to find their relatives too. Who knows maybe they will get the bug and take the plunge to get their old images restored too?

So simply

1. Protect what’s left
2. Get it restored
3. Get Two copies
4. Take a copy to CD Rom
5. Share/store the photos online

Image-Restore.co.uk – Quality restorations in Surrey and Hampshire