Photo Retouch, Photo Restore -
Repair Fading Photos

Photographs capture some of our most precious moments in time and yet we often leave them lying around where they can get damaged by stuffing them in drawers that get rummaged through or leaving them in old shoe boxes for sticky fingers to go through. Photographs are particularly robust but they are not indestructible and from time to time they will become damaged with marks, blemishes, scratches, creases and rips.

Photo retouching and restoration can easily rectify damaged photos, negatives and transparencies by scanning your original damaged photo, digitally retouching it and re-printing it. In most cases the end result is as good as the original was prior to it becoming damaged, but in severe cases the end result is better but not as good as the original was. In some cases the end photo can be better than the original was! Usually poor contrast or colour casts on the original photo than can be adjusted.

Dust and scratches on negatives and transparencies is a real problem. Modern scanners fitted with Digital ICE can help to remove these but they always require further retouching to remove deep scratches and it won't remove dust that was on the camera lens at the time the picture was taken. You can successfully retouch dust and scratches quite easily from damaged negatives and transparencies. Water marks are also a common problem - especially black and white negatives due to the way they are processed. Photo enhancing black and white images is particularly common.

Colour fading is another problem with photos and many photographs from the 1970's are now starting to turn pink. Colour enhancement and adjustment of fading prints is possible but only if you catch them early enough. Leaving them to fade further only makes the task of colour correction more difficult until eventually they cannot be restored. When a photo starts to fade it will start to turn pink, then the highlights will bleach out, then the mid tones, and finally all you will be left with is dark pink areas where the shadow details were. Once this happens it is impossible to correct the photo by scanning and digitally manipulating it. Catching fading photographs and restoring them as early as possible is important.

Sometimes your photographs just need a little retouching to ensure they will be better. The grimace smile, closed eyes, distracting background objects etc. all ruin perfectly good photographs. These are all easily repaired from other photos assuming they are similar in composition. i.e. Copy the eyes from one print and replace them on another. Likewise it doesn't look too good to have flowers "growing" out of the groom's head or the mysterious person entering the shot….

Costs are based on the length of time taken to photo retouch, restore, and repair. We have three levels of photo retouching - light, moderate and extensive. All restored photographs are supplied as either JPEG or TIFF on CD or DVD. Photographic prints are additional to the photo restoration.