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.

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!

Having a family photo repaired as a gift is a great, cost effective way to give something to a group of people. One of my customers recently had a photo of her parents restored and will be having a variety of sizes printed to give as a gift to at least ten different people. Think about it this way – if the restoration costs $60, and the prints are .15 cents each, you’re looking at a very economical way to give a gift.

The more important consideration is the value your gift will bring. During these tough economic times, families are pulling together and helping each out more than ever. And the importance of gifts that have meaning – versus something you put batteries in and numb out to – is becoming increasingly evident. If you happen to have a great old photo of a family member in an album somewhere, cracked and faded, now is a great time to have it restored and give it to your children and grand children. Or perhaps you know your parent has such a treasure hanging in their home – let them know it is possible to not only make it look as good as new but share with their descendants. Have more than one photo in mind? I offer a bulk discount to anyone who comes to me with more than one photo to be restored at one time.

Give me a call or send me an email – preferably with a high resolution scan of your photo attached, and I will get back to you quickly with an estimate.

This is a perfect example of how a photo restoration project can be both a way to recover and preserve family heritage, and a very cost effective way to give gifts to an extended group of people. Although this was a large amount of restoration overall, with the bulk discount I applied and the really low cost of actually printing individual fixed photos, the project resulted in a treasure for many people in this family. A similar photo collage approach is also ideal for photo memorials!

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!

In this photo, taken in the early 1970s, not much is wrong except that it is badly discolored from age. So I’ve scanned it and adjusted the colors, making a digital copy that can be reprinted.

And for the eagle eyed amongst you – yes, that is me on the right. Mom rocked the homemade Halloween costumes!

The castle photo was purchased as stock photography, and then I worked on removing him from the original photo. Some minor correction, and into the new scene he went.

Once he was in the castle scene, I had to re-size him so he’d seem proportionally correct to the castle door. I cropped the entire image so that the castle tower would seem to be a much bigger building off camera. Some more correction was needed so the lighting would be right. Then I added a shadow to make it realistic.

After that, I applied painting styles to the entire image so that the end result would look like it was made up of brush strokes. I delivered it to the wife as a gift she could frame and give.

I took photos of the event on my digital camera, and created this 18×24 photographic quality photo memorial poster for her as a surprise the following holiday season.

The quality of the photos make all the difference in a project like this – we had a spectacular beautiful blue skied day, in a garden full of flowers, and of course the butterflies were magnificent.  This kind of poster could just as easily be done with stock photography of a person’s favorite things, different photos of the same subject, or professional photos taken on a special day.

Imagine a poster like this made from wedding photos – or a child’s first year.  Contact me to discuss a custom poster like this for yourself!