Photo Restoration

This A4+ photo taken in Burma had been water-spoiled causing bubbling in the emulsion and tearing on the thatched roofing. The child also needed to be removed. Although this display does not show it, the woman's face in the original was quite sallow, so needed more flesh tones. I also brought out more of the detail in the woman's clothing and did some selective sharpening.

From a large (A3+) photo taken sometime in the sixties(?)The three central faces had faded and turned pink in the sun and the face of the girl in particular had lost a lot of detail. The male (centre bottom) had lost all detail in his face below the bridge of the nose and I couldn't find his chin line.The fading and discolouration also affected two other faces. Restorations of faces have to be true to likenesses and when you have nothing to go on you can't just make it up. Fotunately the client was able to find other old photos that helped me cobble together the likenesses - all of which had to pass scrutiny. But we got there. 8 prints at various sizes as Christmas gifts for members of the family - now midddle-aged and older.

This was one of three photos of the client's father and brothers taken during WWII. This was easier to do because the paper was not textured and the face had deteriorated less. But the jacket needed recreating.

There doesn't appear to be a great difference between these 2 photos but the first is a tiny 4.5cm x 6cm that had to come up to about 9cm x 12cm. The issue was the faces of the child-in-arms and of the mother. Even though I had scanned at high resolution, the pixels defining facial features were confused with foliage behind. The photo was taken in Ireland in the 1940s. My best attempts to reconstruct mother's profile didn't come up to expectations and emailed photos of mother's face from that era didn't help because the angle was wrong. The client had to come and stand at my shoulder while a pixel-by-pixel reconstruction of mother's took place to the client's satisfaction. It was important to get the beloved face "right" and we managed it. Close inspection showed that the child's face was turned away from the camera, so that was a disappointment.

Precious photos can get very faded and often we do not notice just how much! I did this job gratis for an elderly friend because this treasured photo of her parents had just about lost all its colour. She was happily startled when she saw the fresh photo. There was enough colour left in the flowers and the shirt to make a accurate stab at them, but I needed help with the dress.

Years ago a small sibling had got to work with a red biro and extensively defaced this photo. It was one of 5 studio photos taken of the client's children and she wanted to restore them all as gifts for her adult children. Photoshop has a brand new erase/remove tool that quickly removes parts of photos and just about seamlessly replaces them with surrounding pixels. The biro removal was a breeze. I also made tonal, colour and sharpening adjustments to help the photo out.

I received 3 photos looking exactly as you see them here - empty ovals. I was astonished when Photoshop tools were able to pull up what little data there was, so that I could attempt a passable restoration on all three. Not surprisingly the tones bounced around between too dark and too light at the slightest nudge. But not bad when you look at the original!

The second photo in the set. The photos also appeared to have faded irregularly over a lifetime inside a number of differently shaped frames. They were also covered with hundreds of hairline cracks which had to be removed or painted away so they didn't show at print size. I made no attempt to colour these photos, having no idea of the original colours The client, now in her 50s or 60s had found the photos in her father's toolshed and just wanted them restored if possible. Well, it was possible!

This job came with the empty ovals (above)  A3 - and the colour layer had flaked off leaving hundreds of tiny holes that had to be patched - making for a patchy looking repair. The challenge of this job was the arms: trying to restore convincing continuous skin tone when half of it has flaked off!! There comes a time when you have to make do with "good enough" or you can go on forever!

When this old moisture-damaged photo arrived it was stuck to the inside of the glass and I could barely make out what was beneath all the dust, discolouration and mould. We prised the frame open and tried to separate photo and glass. To our relief the backing board had bent away from the glass so that face and smocking had been largely preserved and were retrievable after we had brushed away dust and mould spores with a soft brush. But much of the photo had water damage, brown stain and mould speckle, and had yellowed over many years. After cleaning up the glass, we were able to put the photo back into the original frame against a new backing board. The client said the restoration was "magical".

This client had found an old photo of her father just after he had set up in business with his own grocery store. The photo had yellowed, and there was a large tear in the centre and long crease in the left hand bottom corner. The photo also needed straightening and dad's trousers had faded in both lower legs. The colour cast was removed, the photo was sharpened and contrast was improved. Client delighted. Three copies for her siblings.

This photo is a companion to the one below. The damage was so bad at the bottom and right of the photo that it was impossible to make out what was originally there - except that it was probably a studio balcony. So I found an online photo of a replacement studio prop and worked it into the photo. Rather than attempt a difficult matching of all the curtain folds - which were also very blotched and marked I looked online for photos of curtains that would work in their place. I could have made them darker to be more like the original tone but rather liked the "look" of the replacement. Certainly faster to do and cheaper for the client. Fortunately the faces and clothing weren't too damaged. I finally put a sepia tone over the photo.

The original of this old A4 size photo was faded, dull, marked and discoloured. It had also been developed in the photographer's darkroom using a "soft style" which blurred features. And distance from the lens also meant definition wasn't great anywhere!! I scanned at high definition to get as much detail as I could and restored the colours by sampling from areas where there was still a bit of colour left. The client was delighted.

The bridegroom - now a retired man- wanted this A4 photo of his wedding in Malaysia restored for an anniversary. Though it's not very visible in the original, a bend in the photo had created a wide band of light across the top half the bridesmaids' garments, which needed to be removed. Years of fading had also introduced a strong magenta colour cast.

This photo had a red stain across the face. Apart from removing the red gash I also blurred the background to remove distracting elements and put the focus on her face, sharpening facial features and increasing contrast.

A family photo taken in the fifties. The client wanted to remove every person from the photo except those in the group. This involved reconstruction of the wall on the right of the photo and of the pavement and background. The photo was also very faded and much of the clothing had no detail. A lot of this was able to be recovered. Using contrast to improve definition also increased the shadows on the faces, which needed to be significantly lightened.

This photo was all about the jerseys. Mother had knitted the same pattern for all the family - just in different colours. The children are now in their 40s and the restored photo was intended as a gift. It had faded so much it was impossible to know what colour the jerseys were - except in general terms, so it took a few emails to pin the correct hues. The fringes of the photo gave some clue to original colours but didn't help with skin or hair colouring, jerseys, fence or garden plants. The photo was trimmed and enlarged.

This is a restoration of an image that was important to me personally. It had come to me on a card which I had framed but it had faded badly over 10-12 years and a replacement was going to cost me $400 (someone is raking in profits!!) The easiest option was to simply restore it by sampling colours from a photo of the original print on the internet.

Although these two photos may not look very different, the photo on the left is covered with a reflective sheen deposited by natural oils on human fingers over generations of handling. The client wanted the photo enlarged slightly and the annoying sheen removed if possible because - from many angles - it was obscuring features on all three women and large parts of the background as well. High resolution scanning only picked up every trace of it. The only solution was photographing at low exposure from different angles to minimise sheen and editing those sections together. The faces still needed to be reconstructed from eg lips, ears, eyes and cheeks that were obliterated by sheen. The client wanted a soft focus on the finished photo.

Sometimes old photos have darkened with time. The client wanted this recently acquired old photo of his family lightened and enlarged for framing and hanging. It had the soft focus that suggested it  had been taken for smaller prints and then jacked up to be printed at larger sizes - so sharpening was in order to bring back detail in faces. It also needed a much more pleasing crop. The clients also wanted a black and white version of the photo which worked well and showed more detail and definition than in colour.

Another composite memorial photo for a ceramic plaque. I was given the first photo but the client wanted a different background. The man was Tongan - the client's father - and loved boats. She also wanted wording removed from the shirt. We looked online for a copyright-free background image that she liked and I placed the "cut-out" subject on it. The sun in the landscape photo was from the wrong direction to work with the shadows on the man's face so I flipped it. I also reduced the shadowing on the face. These jobs are easy to do and don't cost the client much.

A little artistry required in this one. The client was celebrating her sister and wanted old photos restored to feature her. I decided to crop the photo, cutting out most of the background, enlarge the girl, put a feathered selection around her and blur the background to make her stand out. It worked well.

A military photo (WW2). This photo had faded a lot and also taken on an odd magenta cast. The best path was to take it back to black and white, make tonal adjustments and use the sepia toning to warm it up and make it typical of the era. 

A WW1 photo of the client's great grandfather as a young man. It's always a challenge to exactly match badly faded areas to unfaded areas. The photo seems to have been a hand-coloured original taken in a garden but colouring was the more expensive option and the client was happy with a black and white/sepia. Fading had also removed all definition and data from the left side of his face. There was also the usual crop of creases and blotches

The client wanted this photo of her mother restored for a family celebration in Polynesia. She also wanted it considerably enlarged to A4. The original was not only very soft in focus, but very faded and the figure crowded by other people. The client was able to guide me towards original colours and I assembled photos of frangipani flowers for her hair. Because the photo was so faded and soft I decided to try a painterly approach rather than photo-realism. I turned the background into an abstract pattern to bring out the figure and recreated obscured areas. "I LOVE IT!" said the client.

One large sharp definition and high-contrast photo to be joined to a small soft-focusused photo for a memorial service. The client wanted them joined together in an above-waist shot, the final photo to be A3 size! Grandma's face had to be more than tripled in size to work in the new photo making her even softer in definition. I got round the problem partly by putting a soft focus over grandad to make them look as if they belonged in the same photo. The busy background behind her had to be replaced with curtain and she need to sit in "front" of him. Rather than going to the expense of re-colouring both of them - and because of time constraints - the client opted for grayscale/black and White. At A3 size Grandma didn't look too good from close up but client was very pleased with the result.

I almost turned this job down. A bady botched colour restoration had been half attempted many years ago which just laid down strong block colour obscuring all folds and patterns in the clothing. The faces had been left untouched but had faded back to patchy gray, and facial features were almost nonexistent. The client also had no photos of anyone to help me with facial colouring or features. He didn't know how these children - now elderly aunts and uncles - looked at that age anyway, but the object was to preserve original likenesses!! I laboured away for hours - sometimes at pixel level trying to reconstruct shapes of eyes and noses and mouths and came up with the 2nd image which was as faithful as I could get it to what remained of a "possible" original. The client seemed grateful and hoped his remaining aunts and uncles would have fun guessing who was who.

This A3 photo had been photocopied then heavily laminated. In the process red colour had contaminated the entire photo, and was particularly visible in all faces, hairlines and hair. There were heavy flash shadows against the back wall. Colour had faded and facial features had yellowed, blurred and lost definition. The woman's face was scratched and marked. The background - a studio sky scene had a greenish cast. An earlier restoration attempt from the same original had made it look "worse than ever", the client said. She was delighted with the job - a gift for her grandmother - the woman in the photo.

A large (A3) photo. The main problem was the blue that had crept into the print over 40-odd years, turning the faces spectral and dragging all other colours away from their true hues. In addition, fading - or over-exposure - had eradicated much of the weave of the white jersey creating a featureless white blob, so it needed to be tonally adjusted to retrieve the texture, then painted white. The original did not help much with skin or hair tones, so some guesswork was involved but pdfs to the client didn't come up with any issues needing correcting. Small repairs were done all over to get rid of scratches, blur and small blotches. The client - the small girl in the photo - wanted the restoration as a Christmas gift for her mother - the woman in pink.

This was a large (A3) portrait painting of the client's great great grandfather. The client was uncertain whether it was an early hand-coloured photograph or a painting but it was probably done in the 1860s, which puts it well before colour photography or even hand-painted photos. It had surfaced in family possessions and the family wanted it restored for hanging. The portrait was marked and faded, but the areas under the frame gave clues to original colouring so I attempted to match it. I had to use a reference photo to help pin facial colouring, though it was a bit tricky to get the colour intensity correct because of the erratic discoloration.

This was not a difficult photo to do. It was mainly a case of removing yellow colour cast and bringing out detail in the highlights. The client wanted the photo in grayscale. It was a very emotional moment for her when - as an adult - she saw a photo of her father (this one) for the first time.

This photo had accidentally landed in the fireplace and was extensively scorched with holes burned through the face. The background was soiled and scratched and the scorch marks had left a dark tonal residue all through the centre of the face that was tricky to get rid of. The human eye picks up things wrong with facial colours and features very quickly, e.g., the farm photo below was much easier to do because - within limits - a whole range of greens are acceptable - but much more subtlety is needed with  faces.

This was an A4 photo of a NZ family in the pre-WWI era. The woman in the centre had almost disappeared except for her hair and lower legs. I had to go looking for photos of bodice and skirt of the Edwardian era and match the fabric to the winter fabrics being worn by others in the photo. Careful inspection of the photo showed that there were flounces on the bottom of the woman's dress - just visible behind the arm of a chair,  so I created something similar. It took a while to discover that the seated woman was holding a baby, presumably wrapped in a shawl, which I had to create along with the woman's lower arm and fingers. The facial features of at least 5 of the people had almost faded to nothing and had to be picked out at high magnification and emphasised. The client asked for the photo to be grayscale

This photo really only needed repair of the border, and background and selective lightening and sharpening. I also put a sepia toning over the photo. Photos like this are not hard to do because the face is not damaged only faded.

This photo was going to be used on the cover of a family genealogy book but the colour cast caused by the fading made the whole book look bad. I took this back to black and white, darkened the faded areas, selectively increased contrast and put a light sepia over it - much better!

Darkening this photo brought out all the blotching and marks caused by dampness and neglect. Again, stripping back to black and white, careful tonal adjustments,  removal of damage, some sharpening and sepia overlay did the trick.

Perspective correction needed, and a bit of saturation and vibancy.

Lots of blotches and scratches in important places that had to be removed, eg., the boy's lower face and backdrop. This set of photos were mainly to be oval miniatures so I didn't spend much time repairing. Typically photos of this nature are converted to grayscale mode for printing with black ink. If they were to be colour printed I would have placed a light sepia tone over the entire photo to help recreate the colour of the era.        

A painting of a South Island scene done by a family ancestor . Colour was to be preserved, but it needed heightening.

It's not just photos of people that are restored. This A4 photo of a vintage hotrod- had to be restored as a Christmas gift for the man who used to be the proud owner of the car and knew its colours intimately. The only photos the client had to guide me didn't show the colours accurately. But I couldn't get them wrong. So we spent a long time back and forth trying to get the right chrome colour for the flame and parts of the vehicle. The grass, part green and part dry also needed special attention. Finally we pinned it. "He couldn't fault it," she texted me.

This large A3 size image was to be a Christmas gift for the client's mother - a hand-painted photo of her own mother as a young woman. Lots of scratches, stains and blotches including a large scratch through about half the portrait affecting the face. Half way through this job my monitor failed and the replacement - from Japan - was held up by COVID and Sydney waterfront strikes for 6 weeks. So she had a long wait for her portrait but was delighted when it was completed. I also lightened and freshened the subject's complexion.

This was done as a gift for a client who had to wait a long time for it because of monitor issues. The facial colours were blown out by flash and fading so I had to make some educated guesses. The back wall had to be reconstructed, the glass tumbler removed and the whole photo brightened. That's a pretty good deal for a freebie.

This was one precious but dirty, scratched, and blotchy print that had obviously been (thickly) hand-coloured by the photographer some time between 1900 and 1940 - the era before colour photography. Under-estimating the amount of work to be done I under-quoted on this job! Time had turned grandpa and ma's faces yellow and apricot so we needed natural flesh colours. Much of my time was spent digitally removing stains, scratches and discoloration all over the place and restoring background and floor. BTW, that's not an antenna on her head; it's part of her hat. And - horrors! grandma did wear those colours together. Client delighted. This photo had been retrieved with difficulty from somewhere and was a surprise gift for her husband. A4 size.

Restored below

This client - in her sixties - found this very large old photo of her father after her mother's death, and was entranced. The original was torn and dirty but Photoshop to the rescue. One happy client.

Spot the difference? A wedding photo from which I was asked to remove an out-of-favour boyfriend. He was replaced by parts of the hedge and driveway. His face is blurred in this photo for obvious reasons.

The client was devastated to find moisture had got at a precious wedding photo so that it tore when removed from its box. Fortunately she had a miniature version of the same photo that I was able to use to get the shape of the lower lip correct and of the chin on both of them.

The unfaded edge of the first A4 photo shows its original colour. The client wanted the photo to be the same as the original so I couldn't cheat by cutting the unfaded edges off and simply reviving the faded interior. And the colours needed to match exactly. Photoshop to the rescue with cloning and healing, dodging and burning tools, and a lot of colour adjustment layers of varying blends and opacities to bring back colour to faces and restore whites and creams. The photo was also stained and marked. I had to replace the floor and recreate the original shadows. Client very satisfied with outcome.

This was a 60 year old photo a client wanted restored in memory of his father who was captain of the local rugby club. Rather than digitally repair the backing board the fastest solution was to create a new one. The board's true colour was hidden behind the photo, so I matched it and added some paper texture to it for realism. The photo was not only creased in places but was also on textured paper. This meant that scanning laid light onto every bump of the texture, creating a speckled image. Scanning the photo from 4 different directions and using Photoshop's darken filter got rid of that, and it only remained to match the old font, repair the photo and put an era-appropriate tint onto it. I also lightened dark areas a little to bring out hidden detail.

Not a difficult photo to repair because the face was largely unaffected and there was no major discolouration, just blotches, tears and missing sections to be mended. The client asked for a little sepia toning to be added to this photo of her father.

The client wanted these 5 small portrait photos of siblings restored for an adult family reunion. Faces are always the hardest to do. Skin colours ranged from "porcelain" to "slightly olive" and I had to guess what these might be. Definition had largely faded from the faces and there was some yellow cast. Client feedback on emailed pdfs helped but monitors don't always show colours and tones accurately. Client was also able to help with eye and hair colour. She seemed very satisfied with the results.

This client was not satisfied with a photo of his father (left) reproduced by a local business and wanted yellow colour casts removed, greys changed and detail restored to shadows and highlights. The client - himself very handy with a camera - was very pleased with the result.

One of a set of three siblling photos - each (A3) taken at different times by different photographers. They were about to be hung together. The client wanted them all to look similar, with removal of fading and colour cast. This photo was in landscape mode and needed to be changed to portrait to look the same as the other two - so I needed to recreate the lower sleeve and chair.

Although not very visible here, the first photo was covered with a blotchy, grey-silver emulsion that spoiled the photo. All had to be removed.

This client wanted a bad restoration job redone. The first photo was the original. It was marked, yellow and very blurred. The middle photo was a restoration job done by an online restorer that the client said made the photo look worse than the original. The largest photo is my restoration from the original. Not a lot could be done about the blur - even limited sharpening made the face disintegrate. Scarring of the photo surface was repaired and yellow removed from the wallpaper. The client was more than happy with the result.

Another 40-50 year old A4 wedding photo that had faded and yellowed. This had to be stripped down to grayscale and colour layered on at various opacities. If colour of varying transparency goes on top of existing colour - even if faded - it is impossible to control the colour outcome, so all existing colour needs to be removed. Fortunately the client had good colour thumbnails for me to work from.

This was a large A3 photo with writing at the bottom that needed to be removed, severe cracking of the photo finish, scratches, blotches, stains, and irregular fading of colour. In addition there was a dull finish to the photo that the client wanted brightened. Blotches, cracking and scratches through eyes gave some rather sinister looks to two of the faces and needed careful removal. More work could have been done on this photo but time and money were factors.