Copy and Restoration of Old Photographs

If your old family photos are faded, scratched, torn, ripped, cut, damaged by water, smoke, or stuck to the glass, we can restore your photos to bring them back to life.

Almost any type of photo can be restored from Polaroids, black and whites, slides, negatives, tintypes, daguerreotype, and faded color prints. In addition to normal photo restoration, colorizing, removing or adding people, changing backgrounds and fixing clothing are all possible, we can even make your restoration look like an oil painting.

Restoration services will bring back the original beauty of your cherished photographs or create a new edition of it with the power of digital imaging.

Restorations require much patience and skill as a computer technician and as an artist. Restoration work is done by hand, there are no magical computer programs that will produce a quality restoration that retains it original feel.

How the process works.

First, your original is copied in a way that allows for the maximum amount of detail to be extracted from it. A high resolution copy is created, and this will become the image that will be worked on, not your original image. If other reference images are available they are also copied at this time.

Next, because we must produce the highest resolution possible to achieve proper results, your image will now reveal all of the imperfections that must be corrected before your image is complete. This high resolution often reveals defects that are unnoticeable to the naked eye.  Your digital copy is restored by hand using different artistic techniques and a variety of computer programs to assist in the process.

After the image has been restored, it is now time to finalize the artwork. At this time, colorization, swapping out backgrounds, adding or removing people, changing clothing or creating a painterly effect are all completed.

After the photo is restored and all of the artwork complete, the new image can be mounted on canvas or kept true to the original historic form.

Black and white images are printed on black and white photographic paper that still uses wet darkroom process, just as the original did. There are many options available for the final prints and Jonathan will help advise you on the best way to properly present your image in the most historically accurate way.

Portrait of a man with much damage to the image. Copy old photos
Photo of man c. 1800 after photo restoration services