Photos are symbolic for many reasons to different people but the most important of all is preserving precious memory. Over the years, printed photos have been widely used to archiving memories family, events, and others. The challenge with having printed photos is the wear and tear that comes with it with the passing of time. Nevertheless, digital photo restoration can breathe new life into your faded old family portrait.
Our precious photo collections are in fact fading away and with time, many will be beyond recovery.
What is digital Photo Restoration?
This is the art of digitizing photos using a scanner, computer and software to give it a new look of seemingly modern quality. Alternatively, this process can work in reverse to give a photograph a timeless feel. The process of restoration can take a considerable amount of time and patience.
Why Digital Photo Restoration?
Most of the photo papers and inks used up until recently have not been archival quality; as a result, many photo prints show signs of fading and color shifts after only a few years. Poor storage practices such as keeping photos in attics, basements or allowing photos to be exposed to sunlight also contribute to poor condition of most photos.
There are sentimental reasons for wanting to restore some special photos. Restored photos make a great unique personal gift for family members. What better gift than to restore the only good childhood photo of your siblings altogether and then send each of them a restored copy at Christmas.
What type of photos do people want to restore?
People have plenty of family photos that need restoration and there are an endless number of old photos in need of repair. Countless people are interested in genealogy and spend a lot of time tracing their family tree thus ending up with a number of very old photos in need of repair.
“Photos of their parents or their grandparents might not seem very important, but these are going to be fascinating for future generations.”
Norman Kirtlan – Sunderland Antiquarian Society
What are the benefits of restoring old photos?
Family reunions are wonderful moments; we never realize that we’re capturing moments that generations will be interested in years later. These photographs tend to get faded, scratched and/or torn overtime but there is no need to discard them . There is a lot that can be done digitally at Malaika Prints to give them a second chance.
Photographs are a great way of keeping a record of a place, event, or moments. Photography is one medium people have used now for over a century. Photos are really useful when looking at how life has changed. People are more likely to look at the picture than they are to read not to mention that photos tend to be much more descriptive of a place or an event compared to words.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Once all repairs are made, digital copies will allow you to enlarge, frame or reproduce additional prints at any time in the future should disaster strike. The final digital photo file of the repaired photo can be saved as an archival copy and replaces the need for a negative.
- My experience at Malaika Prints Studio; Ayesigamukama Phiona
- Did you know that your photo prints can be restored?
- My Malaika Prints studio experience
What outcome would you like from your old Photo?
- Photographic Reproduction of Old Photos
- Digitally Restoring Old Photographs
- Professional Photo Editing
- High End Retouching
- Enlarging Old Photos
- Portrait Retouching
- Water Damaged Photo Restoration
- Digital Photo Enhancement
- Colorize a Black and White Photo
How do we do Photo Restoration?
While scanning, we choose 300 dpi (dots per inch) for a commercial printer or 720 dpi for the highest quality restoration. Retouching work (4″ x 6″ photos) while for 5″ x 7″ and 8″ x 10″ photos, we use at least 600 dpi.
We focus on the damaged areas of a photo, remove dust, adjust contrast and color without taking away from the original look of the photo. We do not smoothen to cover scratches and rips, this can result in a final photo that looks more like a painting than a photo. We take our time to repair the defects by hand (clone tool and healing tool) rather than take the easy way of using software to smooth away all defects.
We want to repair the most obvious damage, and also the dust and scratches that only show up at high magnifications. We understand that old photos have a certain amount of grain which should be reduced but not necessarily completely removed. At Malaika Media, we understand that a good restoration is one that can’t be detected.
At Malaika Prints studio, photo restoration is one of our specialties – we understand how special photos can be to people and that is why we take on the mantle backed by our ability to make them as they originally were. This has helped our clients save the moments they have on their print photography.
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