Category Archives: Restoration

Back in August, I told you how I was beginning to restore an old, faded and water-stained photo from the 1960s.  My good friend had found it amongst her father’s belongings after his death and asked me what I could do with it.  I replied, “Anything is possible when it comes to retouching!” and gladly took on the project.  More than one month later, I finally accepted that I had done all I could do and presented her with a gleaming 5×7.

Here is the before:

And the after:

I really love how this photo looks.  I had to darken her hair quite a bit, to compensate for all of the work that had to be done to it!  The glass was sealed to the photo from water damage and years of neglect, so I had to retouch all of the cracks in the glass, which was a huge feat.  She has darker hair in the photo than she had in real life, but besides that, I think it looks pretty dead-on!

Restoring old photos is something I love to do when I get the chance.  It is bringing memories back to life!  Seeing old photos anew brings my clients so much joy – how could I not love it?

I am so flattered and honored to have been assigned this latest retouching project.  A dear friend of mine found this picture of her sister from her college days (1963?  ’64?) in terrible disrepair.  Water damage has the glass adhered right onto the photo and obviously it’s also torn and cracked and faded as well.  She asked me what I could do and I gave my usual response: “Anything is possible with Photoshop.”

So she has entrusted it to me and this week I will set to work on restoring and retouching this beautiful photo.  I told her I couldn’t promise a timeline; massive restorations like this can take a lot of time.  But I will begin working on it right away and will post updated to my progress as I go.  These photographs are so unique – someone somewhere may have the original negative, but at this point it would be nearly impossible to track them down.  So not only is this photograph stunningly gorgeous, but it is also a piece of their family history.

First things first: make a high resolution scan preserving as much of the original information as possible.  Done.

Now comes the fun part…stay tuned for updates.