Extreme fading and tears

I have said before that not all photographs can be restored. This photograph came very close to being considered not possible to restore. It had extreme fading and tears with pieces missing.

The photo

This photo dated from before WW1 and was produced in postcard format, a very popular format at the time.

Tinted with sepia, it had become very damaged since during its lifetime. The client admitted that it hadn’t been looked after particularly well, which explained its current condition.

The most important part of this exercise was to try and restore the faces of the two boys. So, scanning at 1,200 dpi, made the features of the two lads more obvious. It also gave me more to work with.

Restoration

My first task was to adjust levels (contrast and colours). This didn’t make as much difference as I had hoped. However, combining that with other methods, I was able to enhance their faces and rebuild some of the missing details, without changing the likenesses.

More questions arose when I managed to source another photo from the same place and time period. The clothing matched perfectly, however, this one was actually black and white and not sepia. Sepia was used to prolong the life of the image until the 1930’s. That’s why it is synonymous with antique photographs. Nevertheless, it too degrades, especially if not kept correctly.

I asked the client how far she wanted me to go in this restoration. It was possible to clean the darker areas to look more like the better kept black and white photo I’d found on-line, but she didn’t want that. She stated that part of its charm was the fact that it was over a hundred years old and she wanted it to reflect that.

So, while not actually restoring this image to “new” quality, she described what I had done as, “sympathetic restoration”, which she said retained its age.