Shortly before Christmas, I was contacted by a new customer who wanted to know if I could restore his father’s old Navy photograph as a Christmas gift. I took a look at it and knew that no matter what else I had on my to-do list in that week, I had to do it – it was such a beautiful example of a formal black and white photograph from that era in American History, hand tinted and loved for many years. But, it had aged a great deal and I could think of no better gift for parents still living than to bring it back to its original form.

He sent me a digitally scanned copy of the photo in high resolution and I got started. Zooming in, it was clear that there was a lot going on in this photo – some fading, as would be expected, and lots of cracks in the surface, both broad and very fine. I also found there was a good amount of damage that is probably caused by moisture or mold, and the lower corner was missing entirely. In a situation like this, thankfully, it is possible to restore the area by relying on what is around it so that is what I did.

Since my customer’s satisfaction is always guaranteed, we went back and forth a few times with little adjustments – for example, my research indicated the WWII naval uniform of that period was navy blue, but that it was almost so dark as to be black, so it took some fiddling around to get the shade we wanted. My technique, which I think sets me apart from many competitors in the digital photo restoration field, involves a lot of close-up, pixel by pixel restoring with a graphics tablet and pen, when dealing with crucial areas like the eyes and features, means that I am pretty much cross eyed when I’m done So I always send off my first round expecting the customer will spot a few things I got to used to seeing, like a funny tint on the teeth.

When it was approved, I sent off the final, high resolution digital file to my customer to get it printed locally and delivered to the folks on Christmas. In the end, everyone, including dad, loved the results and I’m very pleased because its not often that a photo with a lot of damage CAN be restored perfectly and I think this one came out pretty darned close!

This was a small grade school photo of someone’s mom, which they wanted to repair and enlarge. It was one of the worst damaged photos I’ve ever worked on short of actually being torn, because beyond the obvious cracks, the entire surface of the original print was a fine network for cracks. I had the customer scan it at very high resolution so it could be enlarged, which just defined those cracks more.

As you can see if you click to zoom in, the close up of the scan reveals quite a lot of damage. I made sure to tell the customer that it might not be a perfect photo in the end – a lot of cracks were right across her face – but I would do what I could to remove and minimize the appearance of damage.

In the end, the photo really didn’t come out too bad! Sometimes I need to resort to a look that is a little more like a painting than the fine detail of photography, to mask all of the work that has been done, and this is a good example of that. It is something the family can enjoy into the future, though, and that was the goal.

This happy photo of my customer’s grandparents had become mildew damaged, mostly on the right side. I knew I could restore it because much of the damage was on the background and the dress, and it would not be impossible to smooth the rest of it from the grandmother’s face. I zoomed in very close to to work on the areas that needed to have fine detail and allowed the work to be less specific in areas like the background. It was a slow process but I was able to involve the texture of the dress in undamaged areas in replacing areas of cloth which were mildewed.

The end result was new 8×10 prints that I had ordered and sent to my customer to use as gifts. By focusing most of my effort on areas like the face that had to be flawless, and using good data from other areas of the photo to repair the more generic areas like cloth, I was able to restore this photo with only minimal use of Photoshop filters to give it an even grain in the end.

This small photo had faded a great deal and needed to be restored as well as reprinted to new dimensions of 5×7. The first thing that I adjusted was the contrast – and that, of course, brings out all sorts of imperfection details that need to be fixed.

The result is a good example of what one can expect when a photo is as faded, and so much information lost as this one had. I was able to create a good reproductive image of the couple to be reprinted, without all of the cracks, dings and other flaws. The photo can never be as sharp as the original, again, but as long as that is understood, it is a good way to preserve a treasured family photo in digital format and it will print well for reproductions, too.

Sometimes someone will come to me with a photo that they’ve discovered, an unexpected found treasure that offers a glimpse of a long passed relative in an image they did not know they had. And often, that photo has become so worn and faded with time that there is not a lot of information left to restore. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. I just make sure they understand what we’re up against and set their expectations at the right level for the photo I’m working with. This was one such image.

The customer had it scanned herself, since it was the only image she had. I had her scan it at 600 “dots per inch” to assure I had detail to work with, since it was quite small. I certainly had my work cut out for me – more than just the usual aging spots and cracks, this photo also had scotch tape attached to it and hair under the tape. It was going to need a combination of careful filters and adjustments, and manual painting over areas that needed detailed repair.

When an image is this bad, and the color is mostly faded away, it sometimes is easier to remove the color to work and then put it back, or remove it and restore the photo to sepia-tone. I decided to work on this photo in black and white so I could concentrate on the work and tint it later since the color was so faded.

As I tell all my customers with photos like this, I can only restore what is there. If the persons nose is faded to nothingness, and adjusting the image a few different ways doesn’t bring back the detail to work with, the only option is to create a new nose, which requires fine art, not restoring. I also let them know that sometimes when you do apply a lot of adjustments and corrections to a photo, it starts to look less sharp (if it ever was!) and often the best way to resolve that is to create something more akin to a “likeness” of that person, than a realistic image. This is an example of what I mean by that. By the time the restoration was complete, it made more sense to let the texture and fuzziness remain and make it look more like a tinted painting or a colored pencil drawing – not a photo but a good clean representative likeness of the loved one. Sometimes, unfortunately, that is all that can be done. It was certainly a great improvement from the original scrappy little photo!

As you may or may not know, PerfectaPhoto is a side business I developed when I owned my own web and graphic design business for many years. I worked from home and have a cherished “home office cat,” Oscar, who has been my daily companion. Due to the recession, I was forced to close Business Design Studio to new customers and get a full time job – but I’ve kept PerfectaPhoto alive because I LOVE the work of restoring treasured family photos and creating new works of art from your favorite digital images for personal enjoyment and unique gift giving. Most of the projects I showcase on this site were done in a weekend or an evening or two, and I intend to keep this business for a long time.

But every morning, dark or light, cold or warm, I’m now up at 5:30 am… rousting Oscar as I go off for my 1/2 hour drive to Schenectady, where I work as a graphic designer. After over a decade in a brightly sunlit, plant rich environment with rainbow making prisms in the sunny windows where I can make my own hours and life, I spend my days in a small, gray, dark cubicle.  Some days, the sun is down when I get back home. It has not been easy – regular paycheck aside – but by far the hardest part has been leaving my little pussycat behind me every day.

So, to make the transition easier, I dug through a series of photos I’d taken back when Oscar was featured as a “home office cat” in well known home business magazine article, and created an 11×17 photo poster that I could hang behind my computer monitor in the cubicle. It will never take the place of having the big puffalump snoozing in my lap while I work all day, but it will remind me why I work hard all day to bring home the catnip.

This is an aunt and nieces portrait from one of my favorite eras – I love the clothes from this time and covet this gorgeous ladies shoes!

The original photo had a lot of surface cracks and an “oily” surface stain that needed to be removed. As usual, I wanted to remove the degradation without losing the detail of the photograph underneath. I’ve noticed this is a problem with restorations I see online – they often blur the area to remove the cracks or stain but then everything is altered. I prefer to take a very high resolution scan and go in with a graphics tablet and pen and literally erase the cracks by hand without using any filters, so that doesn’t happen anywhere but in background sections. This is a close up of the largest cracked area I needed to repair:

The final restored portrait was a success – my client “absolutely loved them” – and it will be displayed side by side with the other portrait of her grandmother, the Girl with Hat that I restored.

This beautiful photo of my customers grandmother melted my heart the moment I saw it.  And what a great hat she is wearing!

The original photo had beautiful graininess and composition but the surface had degraded over the decades, with areas that had faded or cracked. The customer sent me a very high resolution scan so that I could retain all of that beautiful texture and remove the aging without losing the fine details.

Here is the final photo, restored. Originally, this was probably a black and white photo and I initially desaturated it to black and white to work on it, but then returned a sepia tone to make it look antiqued. That was done simultaneously with the Aunt photo, which it would accompany.

This project is to be a gift from my customer to her husband for Christmas. She borrowed this photo of his dad, who passed away about 10 years ago, from her sister-in-law, and asked me to remove the background people and make him the focal point of the photo. The original was a bit faded and grainy in focus but by scanning it at a very high resolution, it was possible to do what was necessary.

I used elements from the background to fill in the places where I removed people, and extended building, ground and grass elements. Then I separated him from the background and blurred the background a bit to make it more out of focus, eliminating any signs that changes had taken place. I enlarged and color-adjusted him along the way.

Her response when I sent the final photo? Magic!

I’ve shown you how I can tint photos using Photoshop to give them color – but finally, I got to see in person what a tinted photo done the old school way looks like up close.

This photo was originally black and white, and someone had carefully hand painted every bit of it with colored dyes, to make it look like a color photo. The problem? This 4 decade old photo had gotten some water on it and the ink had run!

The original was about 8×10. I scanned it at a very high resolution so I could see every detail, and went in with my graphics tablet and removed all of the cracks, large and small. I also removed a lot of speckling that had taken place in the dye surface. That was really the easy part and something I do regularly.

Replacing the area which had been wet was a bigger challenge because the ink had all run to the color blue. I needed to repaint it based on what little I could see underneath, and pick up the dresses fabric pattern from the areas which weren’t damaged. This was obviously the most time consuming aspect of the restoration.

In the end it was worth the detailed effort – here is the photo, restored and ready to be printed again.