One of the most regular things we deal with at Fine Art Solutions is people bringing us photographs of family and loved ones. These are quite often from before the age of digital photography and social media. This gives these photographs huge significance and immeasurable emotional value as there are no readily available backups or replacements. Given how old some of these can be and the variety of conditions in which they have been kept, many may have deteriorated, faded or been damaged.
While many people do come to us with undamaged photographic images, wanting them to be reproduced faithfully for posterity, others may wish to restore some of the content that has been lost or is becoming illegible. From both types of sources we are able to produce new prints and preserve digital copies in our archives.
A great deal of information can be retrieved from damaged originals and our high resolution scanning equipment is able to extract many details that are less easily identifiable by the naked eye. Our skilled retouchers are then able to take these scans and restore some of the tones that may have been lost over time, as well as fixing tears, creases and holes that are unfortunately common in these precious items.
In this example, our client had asked us to reproduce this photographic original, removing the silvering and banding that had occurred and restoring the original’s faded details. All tears and marks in the surface were also healed. All of this was done while maintaining the antique feel to the image.
This vintage family portrait was reproduced with the focus on maximising the detail in areas that had faded, as well as restoring any scratches or blemishes.
This image was scanned from a tiny original – not much larger than a stamp. It was cleaned up and repaired digitally so that our client was able to preserve this precious photograph.
