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Archive for Old Photos

Sentimental Framed Photograph After Restoration

I received this message from Irene after I has restored her photograph and I was quite touched –

“Thank you so much for your recent work which was excellent as usual. The photograph you restored fits beautifully into the frame and looks wonderful surrounded by a verse from one of my favourite songs.  No apologies for the sentimental nature of the words!  I’ve sent you a copy so you can see the end result.

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There were some lovely surprises with the negatives. Some photographs I have never seen before and others have not been seen by the family for years.  I have no idea who the people playing football are!  I have included several of the photographs in my writing –  which is nearly finished by the way.”

Always very gratifying to receive this kind of message.

8 Great Tips to Help You Make The Most of Your Photographs

There is no better way to remember all the great times in life than through the photographs you have from the past, present and future. Previous generations have very few photographs compared with the number we have today. Photographs are so important yet they often remain locked inside our phones or packed away in a box.

So make the most of your photographs.  Here are 8 tips….

8 TIPS TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR PHOTOS

  1. Download the photos from your phone – either onto your computer or a cloud-based storage site such as MyKnowHowCloud.com where you can store all your photographs and any other important files.
  2. Make prints and enlargements of the best photographs, frame them and get them out on display so you can enjoy them.
  3. Photographs are a great way to remind you of good times that you’ve had and important events in your life.
  4. Photographs are the best way to remember parents, grandparents and past generations. In many really old photographs the people in them often look very serious in formal poses in studios. These were sometimes the only photographs that existed and they have a special charm and look great when enlarged and framed.
  5. Create a photo book of your favourite memories. Your photos are the record of your life so far. A photo book of your family life in pictures is a wonderful thing to have and will give you and others a huge amount of pleasure.
  6. Taking photographs today is a fantastic way of spending time that costs virtually nothing. It’s creative, social and rewarding. We take as many photos each day now as in the first 74 years of photography. It’s important to remember to do something positive with the photos you take.
  7. If they’re not right, fix them! With the fantastic technology available today virtually any photo that is is in some way not as good as you’d like it to be can be resolved with digital software. You can fix lots of elements yourself with free programs such as Google Picasa.
  8. Use Photographs Forever as a resource for any advice you may need with your photographs. You can call me any time. It is my passion that you make the most of your photographs. Get them on display, and get them scanned so you have digital copies in case the original prints get lost or damaged.  If they need improving either do it yourself or let me do it for you. Let there be photographs!

Wonderful Photograph Restored To Former Glory

I was sent this very old photograph that had been rolled op for many years and had become so dry that became cracked and torn and of very limited use to enjoy. With some care and attention this is now digitally restored to its original condition

 

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A Successful Present for Mum! Restore and Colourise a Black And White Photograph

I received this email from Elissa B after she had agreed to go ahead with her photo restoration:
“You will be making my mom a very happy lady – the photo is in such terrible condition because she’s had it on display for the past 23 years, but I noticed a few months ago that she had taken it down because it had deteriorated so much and she was worried about it becoming completely unrecognisable. I managed to swipe it from her safe keeping place in the hopes that you’d be able to restore it. My brother and I are going to give it to her for her birthday in January and she will be made up. It’s her favourite photo in the world. I really appreciate how helpful you have been, you obviously have a great appreciation of how treasured people’s photographs are to them and their memories.”

Here are the before and afters of Elissa’s restored and colourised black and white photograph:

"My photos have arrived safely. They are spectacular, thank you so much for all of your hard work."

“My photos have arrived safely. They are spectacular, thank you so much for all of your hard work.”

Here’s Elissa’s follow up email:
“My photos have arrived safely. They are spectacular, thank you so much for all of your hard work. My mom’s birthday is not until 13th January so I’ll have to wait until then to see her reaction to the colourised photograph of us although I am itching to show it to her right away! It will mean the world to her :-)”

Case Study – iPhone Photograph Restored

I had an interesting request recently. I was sent this photograph taken on an iPhone to see what I could do…. The original is underexposed, skewiff and has a large hot spot caused my the built in flash

iPhone-Photo

Original iPhone photograph

iPhone-after

Fully restored photograph

 

This is the message I received afterwards from my customer – “Thanks for the prints, they are brilliant.  This village is where I was brought up and the house was our family home until 1984. I was born in that house in 1951 so the photo is somewhat special for me.Thank you for making it such a lovely picture.”
It’s always very gratifying to receive this sort of feedback and hear that the work I’ve done brings so much pleasure!

 

Recent Photo Restoration Jobs Undertaken…

Here are just some of the many things we have restored, retouched and manipulated recently – do you have something similar that will benefit from a bit of attention?

 

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Photograph Restorations, Retouching and Manipulation

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Photograph Restorations, retouching and Manipulation

100 Photographs Scanned and Optimised for Just 99p each – September Promotion

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Favourite Photographs Scanned and Optimised

 

This is a great opportunity to get a quantity of your favourite photographs scanned and optimised for just 99p each.

The normal cost of this service is £3.50 each or £2.50 each if there are more than ten photographs.

Other Scan/Optimise Packages Available
50 Photographs @ £1.35 each
25 photographs @ £1.75 each

WHY YOU SHOULD I GET MY PHOTOS SCANNED AND OPTIMISED?

  • It brings your photographs to life
  • Share the photos in a single album with other members of the family
  • Make prints and enlargements
  • No longer the only photos in existence!
  • Share your photos with others

You can show the finished images on your computer screen and TV

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 This is an example of before and after scan and optimisation

 

RECENT TESTIMONIALS

“My goodness, they look amazing! Very many thanks, how clever you are!” KC

“The photos are fab! You are a genius! Many thanks” PC

“Excellent and thanks! I’m actually really thrilled with them and will promote you to everyone” SW

“I’ve just received the photographs, they are perfect thank you very much indeed, you are a gentleman.
As I said before I shall be back to you in the future with some more work” JC

Rush Job From Mexico Completed In 9 Hours!

I received an enquiry from a professional photographer in Mexico recently. He sent a scan of the image and, after I’d responded, he replied:

“A friend tried to restore this photo before, but it was AWFUL, they looked like plastic figurines! Please go ahead with the restoration. I will be very happy if you could do it fast, only if you can and it doesn’t affect the quality of the restoration. Please don’t make them like Toy Story!”

9 hours later he had the restored image for approval and replied:

“WOW, that was waaay faster than I expected. I am very happy with the result!”

Mexico

I was intrigued to know how he found Photographs Forever:

“I Googled photo restoration… I found a LOT, some in the US, some in India and a lot in the UK. And your site is the one I liked the most because your examples look natural, not as CGI as most.”

 So in recent months I have carried out restoration work for customers in Canada, Spain, Australia, South Africa, Isle of Man, Germany, USA, Italy and now Mexico!

 

Graffiti Art Retouched For Bof! CD Release

I recently was asked by Simon, accordianist with the folk/dance band Bof! to manipulate graffiti he had photographed to produce CD cover artwork for their forthcoming CD.

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Here’s Simon’s story:

“I play traditional French and Breton dance music in a band called Bof! We have been going since 2000 and in that time have made three CDs. Earlierthis year we decided to make a fourth recording and, having recorded the music, we looked around for a suitable CD cover image. We looked at dozens of photos – some of idyllic scenes of the French countryside and others of people dancing. But then we came across a photograph I had taken while on a holiday in France some years ago. It was a picture of graffiti on a wall in the ancient, picturesque city of Quimper in western Brittany. The image expressed strong traditional Breton themes using the medium of spray painting favoured by graffiti artists the world over. The music Bof! plays is traditional but with a modern flavour, so this image seemed perfect for us.

Somehow, however, we needed to superimpose text on the image. How could we do this without spoiling the artist’s work? We came up with the idea of manipulating the image to include the name of the band, Bof! and the title of the recording, Bal (the French for dance).

So I sent my image to Photographs Forever to see if they could do what seemed like an impossible job. I have to admit I wasn’t very optimistic, but you can see the results for yourself. Needless to say we are delighted with how it’s turned out and this image will be the cover of our new CD which we hope to release in June.

You can hear samples of Bof! music at: http://www.myspace.com/bofanost

Photograph Restoration, Editing, Retouching and Manipulation Examples Updated

Photographs Forever specialises in photograph restoration, photo editing, photograph retouching and photograph manipulation and has just improved the EXAMPLES tab of the website and has now been updated so that the different types of work undertaken are separated and examples are easier to see and evaluate. There new restored images, retouched photographs, edited photos, and other types of manipulation.

Jag-Before

Before – Mud behind wheels, traffic cone, lamppost, man behind car roof

Jag-After

After –  Clean car, no traffic cone, no lamp post, no man behind the car

Often people think of restoration as just rectifying old damaged photographs from many years ago.

What is sometimes overlooked is the number of improvements that can be made to any photograph of any age.

How often have you taken a photograph that was basically great but spoilt by something or somebody being in the photo that you don’t want in?

This is where photograph editing and photograph manipulation are extremely useful.

We can manipulate your photographs so they are what you want them to be so as well as improving fading, restoring colour we can increase the resolution so that the lower resolution photographs can be printed without pixellation.

Click HERE to take a look at some manipulation examples

Incidentally, the convertible Jaguar is available to hire for weddings and other celebrations. CLICK HERE for details