My client on this project had a photo of her grandmother’s wedding, which had faded a great deal and become quite degraded over the years.

We discussed her expectations before I started – I wasn’t sure if there was enough information remaining in the original to get a sharp detailed result. Her priority was to enhance her grandmother’s face as much as possible. It’s important to understand that sometimes there just isn’t enough detail left in a photograph to restore, and that is why its important to digitize and restore old treasured family photos as early as possible. Another couple years and this young bride’s image might have faded from view forever.

This was the resulting photo of the entire wedding party.

Although it is certainly not as perfect as we’d have both liked to see, enough of the brides face was restored to give my client a reasonable likeness of her grandmother.

In the collection of photos my client wanted me to restore, there was one tiny 2×2 inch slide. It didn’t have a lot of detail and I asked what the story was with that one – he said it was possibly the oldest photo of his mother the family had. It was a negative and I really wasn’t sure if I could pull anything from it.  But I had to try!

The first thing I did was scan it at a very high resolution – increasing the size and capturing every available bit of detail.

Then I inverted the image so it was not a negative any longer and I could see the image I was going to restore.

Obviously, the resulting image was too faded so I adjusted it and started smoothing over the great deal of roughness in the image, that appeared when all the detail was enlarged. The final result is not perfect but it is a good deal better than the poor little slide, and I was able to provide something at 4×6 inches that was a pretty good likeness of the woman as a young lady.

My latest client collected a group of family photos on a visit to Africa, and sent them to me to restore.

As you can see, this wonderful photo of two little boys is badly damaged and aged.

It is about 40 years old so it has yellowed and up close, there are numerous cracks, both serious and fine.

The work took 4-5 hours total, because of the level of detailed work necessary to remove every crack, and repaint areas which were missing completely.  I also scanned it at a high enough resolution that the final image could be reprinted at 5×7 inches, and be a treasure to both men’s children.

This little girl’s mom wanted to create a very special birthday invitation for her daughters 1st birthday. She sent me a number of photos to look at, of her daughter wearing this pretty dress. Some had beautiful smiles but this was such an intriguing shot that her mom really liked, so I suggested we might use it to make her looking at something, like a butterfly.

The party theme was to be a birthday ball for a princess. I sent my client to iStockphoto to choose the perfect castle background scene, and got my instructions on what other elements I might include, and the wording to go on to the card. The final invitation will printed as the cover of a booklet, and I also provided this image without the words in 5×7 and 8×10 sizes so Aria’s mom could have it printed and framed.

And here is the final invitation. I removed her from the existing background, placed her into this castle scene and added the embellishments like flower crown, lilies, butterfly and sparkles. My client loved it even more than she expected she would, which always makes me happy!

It’s always a great idea to include family history and stories in small family operated business web sites, and that is what Tobia Construction did on their About Page. But the photo of the owner’s father was a bit rough looking with age, and needed it cleaned up and improved a bit. There were some dusty parts, some specs of dirt, and a lot of fading in areas for me to work on, as you can see by clicking this image for a close-up.

Here is the final result, which I delivered in 4×6 format for reprinting or distribution to other family members – and scaled to a good size for the web page. I intentionally left the vintage look intact, and added a new sepia tone (brownish tint) which would have been appropriate to this time period.

There was a time when if you wanted a color photograph, the photographer would have to hand tint the black and white photo with colored dyes. This was a very detailed, time consuming process but the result is a beautiful “old fashioned” look that I’ve always loved. When I received this cool young photo of my grandmother Rose, a woman who often wore bright pinks and blues, I knew I was going to have to give it a try – only instead of using dye, I’d use Photoshop.

This is the original photo. As you can see, it’s quite nice – very textured from the paper it was printed on, and only a few minor imperfections.

The first thing I did was scan it, and do some clean up, so it would look like this. I also desaturated it (made it all grey) which removed some of the tiny brown spots that were splattered about.

I had the fortune to know my grandmother so I knew she had beautiful blue eyes, light brown hair and a fair, rosy complexion. I started this project trying to approximate those colors myself – but it turned out to be a real roll of the dice, fifty bazillion shades of blue and brown all considered. Then, I had an idea. I could sample colors from an actual photo of her! I had this one, the grandmother I knew growing up.

A few wild and fun hours later – voila – a “hand tinted” old photo of Rose! As with the traditional method, the goal is to get as life like as possible but of course, there is nothing like the real bloom on a Rose’s cheek (hey now, don’t groan!). I found that laying on flat color was relatively easy but for it to look right, quite a bit of fine tuning, detailed painting and color adjustment was needed to give it depth and realism.

Here’s a closer view so you can see the great texture that is in this image.

For a really nice effect on your old black and white family photos, let’s give tinting a whirl!

People often ask me if I’ve ever been thwarted in my attempts to restore a photo. Usually not, I say – but there are some photo eras which for whatever reason are harder to restore than others. The photographic technology of the 1970s, is a prime example. However photos were printed in that time period, they tend to go extremely bad, even when sealed up out of the sun. And once the image is damaged like this, it’s extremely hard to bring it back to full quality.

This photo was kept in an album made for photographs, supposedly “archival quality” and it was taken in 1978. It rarely saw daylight so I was shocked to find it in this condition when I opened up the album recently. In fact, ALL the photos from that time period, printed this way, were in similar condition.

I can honestly say I threw more of my Frankenphoto super powers into this one than I do most – and this was the best I could get in the end. I offer it as an example of both what IS possible and what is not, so that if you have photos in this condition, your expectations are realistic about what kind of restoration is possible. Perfect, certainly not – but certainly more recognizable (and now digitally preserved) than the original.

This customer from Singapore sent me two separate photos and asked if I could merge them together. I used a third photo, provided by them, as the background.

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I also did some retouching on their faces and eyes, and added shadows so they’d seem to be more realistically leaning into each other. This is the final result, the two kids together in one shot.

This treasured family photo was given to me to restore. It was discolored, cracked and torn in five places, and had some water marks and stains.

I pieced it together on the scanner and restored it as close as possible to its original condition. The hardest part was the mom’s left eye and cheek, which was really torn up so I had to redraw most of that. But this is the end result – quite near to perfect and ready to be shared with family members.

This ongoing client is a professional model who hires me to retouch her photos.

This is a close up of an area of her leg, before and after. I smoothed out the skin, leaving it without any hair bumps but still looking naturally textured.

From the same client, this is a close up of part of the face, before and after. I removed some stray hairs and smoothed out the texture of the skin. I also softened the cheek hollows a bit, and lightly tweaked the color levels.

Whenever I work with a model or other professionals image, the most important thing is that the photos never LOOK like they’ve been retouched! The greatest compliment I can get is repeat business from the same client.