Picture restoration the costs

Justify the cost of a picture restoration.

With picture restoration there is no,” fix my picture” button. You cannot purchase a £700 software application to restore your picture with a button marked picture restoration. Its not as simple as just flicking a switch. Restoring the pictures requires time right from the start.

To appreciate the picture restoration procedure lets take a look at all the jobs involved.

To start any picture restoration the photo first has be made digital, whether the starting photo is negative or a positive print. To get the best from the source photo it should be scanned into a computer either with a negative scanner or a print scanner. Either way the picture must be scanned for optimum tonal range to ensure as much information is captured to enable a good picture restoration. There are actually one touch scanning methods that do this for your but these are far from the best method to get the required data for a good picture restoration. The scan needs to be performed by manually adjusting settings and customizing tone curves. This brings out the details, in the digital file to give it the best chance to be restored.

Once scanned the picture need to be cropped or trimmed to the correct aspect ratio for the desired print size, perhaps even adding a section to fill the proportions required. The next step in the picture restoration is to asses the resulting photo and find the best approach. Normally it would be to first balance the tones and correct any fading within the photo. For colour photos, correct the colour to as near normal as possible, this may need hand colouring to do this (this is normally performed after the restoration stage is complete). Hand colouring is a lengthy process of laying colours onto the photo and masking out sections so each individual component in the scene can have its own colour.

The actual picture restoration is the next stage. The photo needs to be cleaned of dust and scratches and blotches and blemishes. Cracks should be patched out and fold or tears mended. In some case this would mean filling large spaces with other parts of the photo to get the correct tone and texture matches. Where a facial rebuild is needed, great care must be taken to reconstruct a damaged face so that it looks untouched and normal or the human eye will detect something is wrong. We are so good at spotting defects on the human face even if we do not know the exact defect. Other references of the face may be needed in order to make a full picture restoration.

Once much of the picture restoration process has been completed the photo needs to be prepared for print. Once the print size has been agreed then the digital file needs to be optimised for that print size. Selection of paper is also important for the prints, choosing the correct finish to stay in keeping as much as possible to the original.

Once the funds for any work is complete the photos are emailed to a professional printing bureau to be printed. Once received they are then opened, checked over and posted out.

Next time you ask yourself this seems expensive spare a thought for how much time is invested in your picture restoration.