Photo Restoration

Have old, damage or discolored photos? We’re able to fix most problem thanks to our staff of highly trained digital photo retouchers. Not sure if we can handle the job? Feel free to call us at 727-726-7411 and we can discuss the project. Note that we are able to do difficult digital captures of even frail photos.

Case Study: Restoring and Colorizing Mother’s Childhood Photo

A client brought us a beautiful portrait photograph from his mother’s childhood. The original was worn and faded, we were able to scan the photo and turn it over to our digital photo retoucher who cleaned it up and colorized it per the client’s instructions. The final product is a gorgeous picture that we printed on canvas.

Cast Study: A Mother, A Daughter and a Hat

What do you do with a hat that’s not there? That’s the problem we faced when we got the job of restoring this photo of a woman’s mom and grandmother.

Looking at the “before” picture, you can see one big problem—the tops of their heads are chopped off! With the goal being to print this photo on canvas, Scott Menaul (our founder and the resident Photoshop guru) set about making it worthy of hanging on the wall. Here’s what Scott wrote in his blog about this project:

In the original photo, you can see that the tops of their hats are cut off. Using Photoshop, I expanded the picture by extending the wall in the background and recreating their hats (that’s a pretty neat trick.) I also adjusted the colors to make up for fading.

Here’s another great group shot of the women with their friends. She asked that I remove the background (chain link fence, people walking by) so the image in the giclée on canvas would focus on them. Here is the before and after:

The photo had scratches on it that I was able to fix. You can see the corrections below:

If you have a box of old photos or even newspaper clippings or your kids’ childhood drawings, you should dust them off and have me restore and reproduce your favorites. You’re welcome to bring your stuff to my Clearwater, FL studio and we can go through it and figure out what you want to do. Call me at 727-726-7411 or message me online.

Just today I had a woman and her mother come pick up a reproduction of a family photo collage. The collage was made over 30 years ago, pieced together from more than 100 family photos from over the past century. The daughter was in town for a couple days and she wanted to get copies made since they weren’t sure how much longer the photos and the glue holding them together would last.

They had tried going to Kinkos to make copies but they were told the collage would have to be taken out of its glass frame and run through a rolling scanner, which would have wrecked the fragile photos. They came to me to see if I could reproduce it without taking it out from behind the glass that was helping hold it together.

As a photographer with my own studio and equipment, I had no problem shooting it through the glass and making digital copies. As a Photoshop expert, I was able to clean up the photos and get it ready for printing. And as a giclée printer I was able to handle the reproduction in-house and have the entire job done within 3 days. I also gave her it on CD.

If you have a photo you want restored and retouched, feel free to call us at 727-726-7411 and we’ll be happy to discuss the possibilities with you.

Cast Study: Photo Restoration, in Scott’s Words

“A client came to me with an old family photograph that had some pretty serious damage and they wanted to know if I could restore it and print reproductions for them. I thought you might be interested in seeing what I did. Here is the before and after:

Before and after. Notice the significant fading and the big tear in the original.

The photo was almost falling apart when I got it. A piece of tape on the back was all that was keeping the rip from making it fall apart. You can also see how faded and worn the photo had become with age. Here is a close-up of the tear and how I handled it.

Digitally restored by removing the tear, fixing the damage and color correcting.

Once the photo was fixed up, I printed a bunch of giclee reproductions on archival paper and the client gave them out as Christmas presents at a family reunion.

Case Study: Dad’s Navy Photo

The original photo was scanned so it could be worked on digitally. After restoring the image, we discussed with the client what they wanted done and they chose to add a background of blue sky and sea. The final product was a photo on canvas for their home.

Old faded photos can be brought to life with digital colorization techniques. You tell us what you’d like to see and colors to match and we will do the rest!

Case Study: Photo Colorization

A customer brought us an old photo of a bishop that she wanted restored and colorized. First, we did photo restoration techniques to fix decades of fading and wear and tear. Then once we had a good base photo to work from, we set about bringing color to the bishop and his clothing (leaving the background mostly colorless per their instructions.)

Cast Study: Muhammad Ali and Angelo Dundee Autograph

To celebrate a special appearance by Boxing Hall of Fame trainer Angelo Dundee, our neighbors at Clearwater Boxing had us take their autographed poster of Ali and Angelo and create a colorized version on canvas. They asked us to remove the autograph and color the gloves red.

We also did the digital capture, which was a bit tricky because the original couldn’t be taken out of the frame since it had become stuck to the glass. The photo also got the standard color, brightness and contrast corrections that we do free of charge for anything we print on canvas.

Sports fan should also check out what we can do with sports photo collages!