Merry Christmas to everyone – before and after! Here’s looking forward to 2017 being a great year.
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Archive for photo restoring – Page 6
I recently received an order from Iain Anderson from Renfrewshire as he wanted me to produce a montage on canvas of some his photographs taken when he was in various dramatic stage roles.
During our conversations I found that Iain has his own radio show on BBC Scotland and he plays some really great music, much of which you may not have heard before and is well worth hearing, which you can hear again on the BBC iPlayer.
Click on his photograph below for the link to listen
Iain Anderson – BBC Radio Scotland
We all have old photographs that we treasure, whether they are old family photographs passed on from previous generations, or historic photographs of the homes and towns we live in.
Photographs are the best tool we have to relive our cherished memories and remember loved ones who are no longer with us. Unfortunately photographs don’t age well and over time their quality diminishes.
Because photos are printed on paper things such as handling, light, moisture, dust, and scratches often affect them. Regrettably, these things can ruin our photos and prevent them from lasting through the generations.
Most of the photo papers and inks used up until recently have not been archival quality, and as a result, many photo prints show signs of fading and colour shifts after only a few years.
Poor storage practices such as keeping photos in attics or basements or allowing photos to be exposed to sunlight, have also contributed to the poor condition of most photo collections.
People don’t realize there is a problem until they take a look at their photo collection after many years of storage. Our precious photo collections are in fact fading away and in time many will be beyond recovery. There is also the possibility of their demise in the case of fire or flood.
It is a good idea to restore your special photographs or even entire photo collection in order to stop the unavoidable destruction that will take place no matter how carefully the photos are stored. Once restored, the photos can be copied to CD or DVD for long-term storage and safekeeping. Once you have digital copies you needn’t worry about further damage because digital images do not change at all. You can use these digital images to make a set of prints on archival paper, which will last over 100 years in an album with no signs of degradation or twenty years exposed to daylight for framed prints. Additional prints can be made at any time in the future should disaster strike. You can also share the images with other members of your family and friends.
During the restoration process it is also possible to improve the quality of the original photograph – for example removal of spots, stains, marks, tears as well as improving contrast, brightness, colour balance and enhance detail, focus and sharpness.
It is also possible to add colour to black and white photographs, as well as being able to make quality enlargements for framing.
Are you one of the many people who has hundreds or even thousands of photographs, some in albums, some in boxes, and in more recent years, huge numbers of digital photographs on the computer? The thought of organising all your precious family photographs can seem quite overwhelming although when it’s done there are huge advantages that make the job very worthwhile.
How good would it be to be able to find the photos you want, when you want them, and end the seemingly endless frustrating searches that we’ve all done in the past. More importantly, when your photographs are organised, future generations will have all the benefits of your efforts. They will know who is who, dates, places and any other detail you may be able to add. Your photograph archive becomes a valuable heirloom.
It’s Easier Than You Think
At first it may seem like a task that is just too enormous to tackle. The good news is that when it’s broken down into simple steps, it’s much easier than you think, is actually great fun and is very rewarding.
- Collect together all loose photographs and albums into one place
- Sort the photographs into as near chronological order as you can. During this process put aside any duplicates, sub-standard photographs and ones that you don’t like or are irrelevant.
- Scan all the remaining photographs to your computer. Use a scan resolution of 300 – 600 dpi so that any future prints made from the scan will be good quality. If you can’t do this yourself I can do this for you.
- Create a sub-folder for each year in the My Pictures folder of your computer and put the scanned images into the appropriate year’s folder. Where the year is not known just use your best estimate. To further refine this you can add a sub-folder in each Year folder using the date and subject. For example name the final folder 2013-10-15 Family Party. By using the date format with the year first this makes sorting the folders more logical.
- Picasa is a free program by Google that makes it very easy and straightforward to keep track of all your photographs. It will automatically find all the photographs on your computer and arrange them all in chronological order keeping the names of each folder. This will include all the digital photographs you already have on your computer.
- Apart from organising your photos you can also enhance them, crop them, and add different effects, although I would suggest you leave any editing until you have the photos organised. You can download Picasa free from http://picasa.google.co.uk/
- You can also title each photograph with further information about the people, places and any other information required.
- Tagging your photographs in Picasa is also a useful way to find what you want quickly. A tag is used for a type of photograph, for example ‘Home’. How this could work is that any photograph from any year that features your home could be tagged with the word ‘Home’. Other tags might be ‘Buildings’, ‘Holidays’ or anything else you choose.
- Picasa has great search capabilities. If you type in its search field any word relating to the name of a folder, sub-folder, title or tag it will instantly display all those photographs on your screen. Picasa also has a fantastic face recognition feature which work extraordinarily well. It recognises faces even in large group photos, makes a thumbnail image of just the face. You name each different face and it finds all the photographs with that persons face, at any age, and creates a thumbnail of the face against that person’s folder (automatically created). If it doesn’t get it right (rarely) you have the option to correct it. This is a very useful feature in family history projects.
Backing up Your Photographs For Safety
So now you have all your photographs in one place, you have named folders and photographs and they are easy to find. It’s important that you back them up. This can be done simply by copying the files onto a separate USB external hard drive, CD or memory stick or better still in the cloud on line. Livedrive (see www.livedrive.com) is an easy inexpensive cloud-based backup service – a small price to pay for security of all your precious photographs and any other information you need backed up.
Here is an interesting order I completed recently. Not only to combine two photographs that were in very poor condition but also to add the woman from the first photograph – minus baby! – to the second photograph while turning her around so she was facing the right way rather than turning her back on her husband!
This was the email I received from my customer…
“Well you’ve done it again, this time with knobs on and I am not referring to the door knob in one the photos! What an absolutely fantastic result. I appreciate the time and effort you must have put in to get the images of individuals in one photo transferred and included in another. The results to include the clean up and restoration are really brilliant, my great grandmother has literally “rejoined” her family – Fantastic. I can’t wait to present the final prints to members of my family.” John P
Many of my customers have told me how they’d had difficulty confronting the task of sorting out their photographs which have piled up over the years, so I hope you find this helpful.
I’ve found that once I actually start a job that has been difficult to face, it’s always much easier and quicker that I thought it would be and invariably I actually enjoy the process, getting a good sense of satisfaction when it’s all done.
For example if you like the idea of having modern photo-books that will last forever with no deterioration, no loose photographs falling out and also a book of the family photographs that your relatives can easily have their own copy of then read on…..
It’s easiest to break the project into smaller manageable stages….
- Gather all your photographs together into one place
- Make a specific time to sit and go through them to separate the worthwhile ones from the not so worthwhile/duplicates/irrelevant ones
- Put them into some kind of order – this is not critical as it’s very easy to change the order after scanning
- Have the selected photographs digitally scanned – these can be put into separate “folders” if required
- After scanning think about captions and or groups for the photos
- Work out a suitable order for your photographs to go into the new photo-book
- When your photo-book has been put together you will see a ‘virtual book’ on line for checking and approval
- Order your photo-book(s) – this can be the relevant size/number of pages to suit the photographs in question.You may find it easier to divide the photos into several smaller books to keep sections separate (dates/places/content)
If there are various family members interested in your project, it is often the case that the overall cost can be shared so each person gets a finished photo-book and the cost of production of the book split several ways.
I hope this is helpful – don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss any aspect further or if you need any further information – I can help you at every stage.
I can also assure you that the final photo-book will be something that you’ll truly treasure and you’ll be so glad you went to the effort to get it made.
Here is a photograph I was asked to digitally restore. The original photograph is about a metre and a half wide and the photograph is absolutely fascinating as it contains so much detail. It’s a photograph of Robertson and Ginnetts Gigantic Circus at the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley Stadium in 1925 featuring my customer’s great grandfather who is the ringmaster!
Here is the whole photograph before restoration, after restoration and then a single detail followed by a detail of that detail! There are literally hundreds of recognisable faces.
Here are some other close-up sections going along the front row from left to right
My customer’s Great Grandfather is the ringmaster on the left with the top hat
The following is an extract from Anne Clendinning, “On The British Empire Exhibition, 1924-25″
The British Empire Exhibition, held in 1924 and 1925, assembled the member nations of the empire to develop imperial trade connections and to cultivate closer political ties between Britain and her territories.
The British Empire Exhibition opened for a second season in May 1925, but only after considerable debate. Despite the enthusiastic press reports and the self-congratulatory comments of the exhibition organizers, the 1924 exhibition was a financial disaster. Executive director Sir William Travers Clark blamed the cold, rainy summer. Although 17 million people had passed through the turnstiles, that figure was much lower than the anticipated 30 million visitors that had been the basis for 1924’s projected returns. If only to try and recoup its investment, the British government agreed to re-open Wembley in 1925.
More recently, the British Empire Exhibition appears in the 2010 film about the Duke of York’s stammer wherein Prince Bertie delivers a painful public address at the exhibition’s closing ceremony in October 1925.
There is another interesting article of the British Empire Exhibition here
Here is the original photograph, then the restored and colourised version. I knew what colour the Union Jacks were – all the rest were my best guess!
Photograph Before Restoration
Photograph After Restoration and Colourising
Here is an example of a good gift idea – portraits of the family pets.
This example of the history of the family cats, the portraits were made as a gift for the owner from existing snapshots. The scale of the cats’ heads were matched and the busy backgrounds eliminated so that their faces could be seen clearly.
Restored Cat Portraits
A few days ago I received this touching story from Jane H following my restoring this photograph
Photographs Forever photograph restoration
“Our daughter said that as soon as my husband saw the photo of his mother that you managed to create from the old somewhat dilapidated little old photo, he would probably cry. I wondered if I ought to give it to him on some other day rather than his 86th birthday if it would upset him. However I did eventually give it to him yesterday on his birthday.
With my help he unwrapped it as he only has the use of one hand. He said nothing at all just kept staring at it. At last I realized he had tears in his eyes as he hadn’t realized there was any kind of photo of his mother who died many years ago. He put it on the table next to his chair and just kept picking it up and putting it down still unable to say anything. However as soon as other people begun to arrive to celebrate his birthday he insisted they come and look at the photo he is so proud of.
As he is disabled in a wheelchair he has carers twice a day to help. The first thing he did was to hand them the framed photo explaining in his own way that it is his mother. Our daughter was also quite emotional when she saw it remembering her old cockney grandma. I told her she was right her father had cried but only with emotion and happiness.
He is amazed that you were able to restore such a small, damaged picture into a perfect photo of his mother who he was so close to as she brought him up alone. He now has the picture on a table where he can see it at all times. We have numerous framed photos of family but until now he had nothing. I just wanted to thank you so much for the trouble you took in restoring the photo and giving him such pleasure.
Thank you again. I have told everyone who has seen it who restored the photo so don’t be surprised if you hear from a few next year!!”
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