We all have old black and white photographs that we want to preserve. Unfortunately, these fragile prints don’t always age well. Sometimes the damage isn’t so bad. A touch-up here, a color fix there and it can be restored to its original condition. But in cases where parts of an image are missing or where it is badly creased, it takes special editing skills to rebuild it.
This is where the specialists comes in. Advanced photo repair is a delicate art that calls for precision and attention to minute details. If basic photo restoration is like painting a building to give it a face lift, then advanced restoration is a bit like reviving an old mural on its walls. The restoration specialist magnifies the image and then uses software to fill in damaged or missing parts, pixel by painstaking pixel.
The results are near miraculous. Just take a look at the examples below from the ScanCafe archives. In each instance, the specialist has to use information available in the image to add missing or incomplete details. The floral pattern on a curtain, the way a person’s hair frames their face, a smile that lights up the eyes, the texture of a wool coat…details such as these help make a photo – and the memory it represents – whole again.