One of our favorite things to do is to repair and restore old photos for people. It allows us to put our Photoshop skills to work to bring memories to life, which is always a good feeling.
Photo repair projects usually begin when someone has some old photos they need scanned. The goal is to get them into a digital form so they can viewed in slide shows, or used in a family book.
Often, old photos show signs of age. They have faded, the colors have shifted, dust and scratches are visible, and sometimes there are pieces of the photo that have been torn off and lost. They can look rather hopeless.
Fortunately, we have a lot of tools available to us to return an image to its former greatness.
We typically begin by scanning your old photo at a high resolution, giving us many pixels per square inch to work with as we go. We straighten the image and adjust levels so the blacks become blacker and the whites whiter. This takes care of many pictures that are in good shape already.
For those photos of slides that need more work, we use special techniques to remove the aged paper look and make dust and scratches vanish. If a portion of the image is missing, we spend time recreating (if we can) the missing piece.
The work can be painstaking, but the results are often thrilling. Cleaning up and restoring old photos allows the subject of the photo to come alive again. It is no longer a faded memory in a box, but a stunning, clear image that can be shared, printed, or used in a video.
If you have old photos that need repair or restoration, get in touch with MuseArts. It’s work we love doing.