Restoring a colour fade is never an easy job.
This restoration was from a 29 inch photo print of a Hawker Hunter Mk 6A caught in mid-flight. The scan made from the print was a pdf, not ideal for the restoration as it’s not a native image format and normally very compressed and showed many development banding lines and fade bands which added to the complexity of the restoration.
As you may have read in my colouring tutorials, colour only “sticks” to the image if the underlying tones are balanced. For example, the density of the sea needs to be similar both sides of the image, the wings of the plane need to be toned the same too. The important thing for the customer was that it should be good enough to reproduce to 29 inches again, so attention to detail was essential. A formidable task when you know that every pen stroke of your retouch has to be spot on as it will be under heavy scrutiny when its 29 inches wide. This restoration just tipped the £100 mark including the print.
Development banding lines on an awkward photo restoration
The final restoration turned out very well and both I and the client were very pleased with the result. Presented with such a challenge its sometimes easier to say “no” it can’t be done but having faith in your own abilities is essential. More often than not, restorations like these are out of budget for a lot of people and they cannot justify the costs. However when the image was this bad to start and the results are this good to finish, its worth every penny!
Fully restored colour fade and re-coloured 29inch print Hawker Hunter Mk 6A
If you have a large faded print that needs colourizing and want to know if I can help, get in touch or visit the main colourizing a black and white photo page, for more information.