Repairing Your Family Treasures
There was a time when the process to copy and restore an old photo was long, tedious, expensive, and inaccurate. They were known as the film days. Here’s how it worked…
The Old Method of Restoration
Client brings in a photo. We’d take the image, photograph it with a large or medium format camera to create a negative. Dyes and pencils were applied to the negative to repair selected areas. From that “retouched” negative, a print was ordered. Additional work was done to the new print; spotting, airbrushing, etc., then once again, the now repaired print was photographed to create a clean negative. From that negative, all new restored prints were ordered. This process took weeks, sometimes months, and required the talents of gifted artists and negative retouchers to complete. It wasn’t always accurate, and was a very expensive process.
The New Method of Restoration
Client brings in a photo. We either photograph or scan the damaged print with a high resolution camera or flatbed scanner to create a digital negative. The image is imported to the computer and all restoration is done via photo manipulation software such as Lightroom and Photoshop. Once the restoration is completed, the new digital file is uploaded to the lab to order your prints. The process just went from weeks or months, to hours or days. The gifted artist is now the skilled hand of the photographer, assisted by the incredible power of the computer and software.
The Bottom Line
Your ancestors didn’t have cell phones, never took selfies, and if they owned a camera, it was rarely used unless on vacation. They relied heavily on professional photography studios to document their families. They took this task very seriously, invested heavily in time, effort, and expense to create a visual history of themselves. They passed this visual history on down to their descendants-YOU! It is now up to you to protect their investment and make sure YOUR descendants have the same opportunity YOU had in seeing and appreciating that visual history. Photographs will fade – it’s science. You must be proactive in protecting, restoring, and repairing those images so your own great grandchildren will know where their beautiful green eyes, receding hairline, or bright red curly hair came from.
Newsome’s Studio has been repairing and restoring old photos for over 30 years. Find your family’s visual history and bring it by the studio and let us evaluate the image and provide you a quote on copying and restoring those images, giving new life to the history handed down by your ancestors.
