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Case Study One: A Wartime photo of a gentleman in uniform. The photo was heavily creased where it had been folded to fit into a frame and was stored loosely in a box, allowing the surface of the media to become scuffed.
Our inspection shows that the surface of the image is matte - a very common media for this type of image at that time.
Overall the image is quite dirty due to age and improper handling.
We can see that the image has some quite bad scuff marks, along with some minor indentations and scratches
There is also the issue of the heavy creasing along the lower portion of the image. It looks like the photo has been fitted into a smaller frame at some point.
Taking a closer look at the crease shows the full extent of the damage.
Note that there is also scoring to the surface of the image underneath the crease.
This closeup shows the extent of the dirt contamination and scratches to the surface of the material.
As these defects are in the facial region of the image they are a major distraction to the viewer.
We start by removing some of these scratches manually. Some companies prefer to just blur the image, hiding the scratches. This is a lot faster, but loses a lot of the original information.
Initial digitisation of the image
After manual defect removal
As you can see above, there were a lot of dirt and scratches embedded in the image. These were painstakingly removed to preserve the original picture.
After a lot of cleaning and repair, we replace the surround with a new mask and add a slight drop shadow to increase definition.
Rollover the image with your mouse to see the overall effect of the repair!
Finally, the repaired image was printed on Epson Archival Matte paper. This is a popular choice for older black and white photos, as it has a good deal of definition in the light greys and blacks are very dense.
The print is produced using Epsons Ultrachrome K3 inkset - this is the very same ink as used by professional photographers worldwide for exhibitions and gallery prints.
The image was enlarged as you can see below and a slight warming tint was applied to match the ageing of the original.
Our technique for this is to remove defects individually by hand.
The customer was very pleased with the results and said they thought the image was now better than the original had ever been!
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