Consumer Photo Retouching Examples
Old photos are like endangered animals. Once gone they can never be replaced.
We need to take better care of them. When something awful happens to cherished images its traumatic. Worse yet is when we lose a loved one and have nothing to remember them by.
As dramatic as the results are when an image is restored, the positive reactions of the recipients can be worth more than the monetary rewards.
Preventing the kind of damage you see below is the most cost effective. The effects of chemicals in scrapbooks, albums and framing, as well as air pollution, body oils, sunlight, decoupage, and other hazards can destroy them over time. Store them properly and if you want to give copies to others or use them for creative displays, please make copies and keep the originals in storage.
A very common problem, family photos in very bad shape. The term for these photos on card stock are Cabinet Cards and you can actually date them from the style of the card.
This restoration involved a high quality scan and reference photos of the individuals. It helps to have experience in portraiture when you need to rebuild large portions of peoples faces. The final image was output to 8x10 photographic film as well as large format digital prints.
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Photo of my parents taken at a friends house while mom was pregnant with me. Cleaned up and colorized.
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Even professional photos don't always come out the way clients wish... especially group photos.
Lots of little things were cleaned up. The main change was overlaying the son's head from another shot.
The these two children were killed in an auto accident. The parents wanted a photo of them together,
before cell phone cameras. They only had a few InstaMatic snapshots and some marginal laser prints.
It was a lot of work to get to the final full color, digitally printed 11x17.
Some retouching projects are more challenging than others...
like this photo print on card stock from the 1890s.
The client was a collector of San Francisco artist Eugene Tangier's work.
The above photo was taken
in his studio, shortly before his untimely death.
The enhancement resulted in proving the authenticity of existing works and
identifying several previously unknown works.
Public display of historical materials has its drawbacks.
This Contra Costa County cowboy was one of several photos fading on the museum wall.
Several rounds of high resolution scans and hours of work were needed to bring out the details.
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