At Blitz Photography we know how important family photographs are. We know this because of the number of times clients arrive at the studio clinging onto cherished photos of relatives who have long since past away, that have been damaged or have faded over time.
Although we are well known for our international award winning photography, we are less recognised as one the best photo restorers in the Gosport, Fareham, Portsmouth and Havant area.
If you have valuable family photographs which need restoration to preserve them for posterity, here are a few tips to help you.
Prints will fade over time if exposed to light. It is therefore important to digitise them as soon as possible. If you have a scanner then scan them at a reasonable resolution. Large prints ( 10”x 8”) need only be 300dpi (dots per inch) while smaller picture you can increase to 600,800 or even 1200dpi. Make sure the print is pressed firmly flat against the scanner or the scan will look out of focus or fuzzy.
If you have photo editing software like photoshop you can edit and enhance this image in many ways. You can increase of decrease the contrast, use the spotting tool to erase marks, the patch selection tool to cover rips and tears to the clone to replace missing areas of the print.
If you can import the file picture back into the raw converter you have even more control of highlights and detail.
Once you have worked on your file you can attach details and information you may know about the photograph to the image metadata. Then give it a title and store it away. Titles and data are important for locating the image later.
Negative and transparencies can deteriorate over time if not stored correctly.
If you have negatives, you’ll need a scanner that can scan transparencies or a stand alone negative scanner. You can import the images into your computer using this device, and edit in the same way you did the prints.
At Blitz Photography we have a comprehensive Photo Restoration Service.
We generally recommend you bring your pictures into the studio for us to make an assessment.
We can tell you what we can or cannot do to bring you pictures back to life.
We carefully scan your prints, negative or transparencies on site, then use photo editing software to restore and enhance you pictures.
Sadly, some pictures are beyond salvation. Those that can be salvaged we will restore.
Photographs should be shared by a family forever. At Blitz we help save your family photographs for history.
The image example is a photograph take before World War I that had faded badly over time. We were able to recover much of the original image and repair the damaged areas. We sepia toned the image as requested by the owner and had it printed on Fuji Crystal Archive photographic paper and board mounted like the original.
