Sometimes I find Photo’s, Images & Pictures of (former) members of family that have been degraded over the years and decades. Dust, Scratches, Color Degrading, UV-Influence, and other issues that literally fade images away. In Some cases and situations these imaged can be recovered. Like this example: a portrait of Dave Plu’s Mother, who deceased during the 1970’s and is just one of two remaining pictures Dave has of a Mother he barely knew.
What I did? First I scanned the Portrait using an Epson V850 Perfection flatbed scanner to digitalize the picture. Using my iMac and Photoshop I corrected colors, levels, removed dust and scratches gave it the proper DPI, set white and black point properly, corrected contrast, and set it’s dimensions so the image could be printed on my Epson Photo Printer right into it’s original frame and fit. Job done and another friend happy with a new version of his childhood family memories.
One issue always remains, when restoring five decade old images; up to what extent does the retouching needs to be done? In this case, I’ve decided to leave some of the artifacts, to show it’s an vintage image taken decades ago, in which analog colors were very much different than the present day digital equivalent ones. And I saved both digital files (before and after) to be able to show what I’ve changed. In restoration industry I’ve heard this is a daily practice. Which is why I deliberately left in the glue marks at the four corners. They have become part of the document’s structure and show the images was first part of a family photo album.
