The shopkeeper

This photo restoration, the shopkeeper, is a picture that was not possible to fully restore. There were two areas completely missing and creases that made it impossible replace the missing details. This meant that the best that could be hoped for was to improve the image.

One of the missing areas almost obliterated an entire Brooke Bond sign. Signs on the window had also been destroyed, but were a repeat of signs on the left. An easy fix.

The peas ad wasn’t so lucky.

In the case of the peas and tea adverts, there was not enough information remaining to be able to reliably reproduce what had been there.

Trying to find a similar signs to attempt replacement proved impossible.

Improvement only photo restoration

With some of the signs unidentified, I knew I was not going to be able to restore the entire photo. It then became what I regard as an ‘improvement only’ photo restoration.

There wasn’t enough of various parts to restore them. The tea sign was one of many signs that had been placed in the space above the doorway. So rather than try to leave some of them in place, I opted to remove it and return that area of the building to brickwork.

This often happens in damaged photos, especially those with this kind of subject matter and it’s often up to me to make decisions on whether maintaining what is there or removing the remains is best.

In this instance, I tried to retain as much as was possible, even if parts were missing. There have been other occasions where the reverse has been more appropriate.

What this does do is illustrate how some photos are not fully restorable. With some, we can polish what we can in order to maintain the majority of it, thereby returning a clear, damage-free photograph to the customer, with most of the memories attached to it intact.