This project shows the restoration and recreation of some vintage circus posters. If an image is in digital form photo restoration means anything can be restored including posters.

I have been carrying out many poster restorations for an upcoming book ‘The Posters of Bertram Mills Circus by Steven B Richley’ available from doublecrownbooks.com and Steven has given me the permission to use his images in this post.

The vintage posters had often been folded and stored away and subsequently made into digital images. The method used to digitize them was not the best and the vintage circus posters needed some attention.

Vintage circus poster restoration

One of the posters only existed in black and white and had to be completely redrawn and recreated.

Vintage circus poster recreation before recreation. The image only existed as a photo of the poster.

Vintage circus poster recreation after. With help from Steven in sourcing fonts and colour pallets, this is the final result.

With help from Steven in sourcing the fonts and colours, the image was recreated as best as we could, hand drawing the fonts where possible to give that vintage feel. Techniques used were the pen tool to draw around the lettering and recreate them as “stroked paths”. That way a black edge could be added to the lettering. The curves in the background were also recreated using the path too. The mule colours were referenced from a real mule and the man was a best guess!

This is less photo restoration and more “recreation” but was fun to do none the less.

If you are a Historian, Museum or Historical Society and are looking for some unique content or help with an ongoing project please see my Specialist Imaging Services page for more information and how you can hire me for my photo restoration services.