Cameron had sent me this wonderful studio portrait that had been damaged. The bottom of the photo had been torn off and we had to patch this up to appear natural. The photo had also faded and lost come of its colour. This was also restored at the same time. The completed photo now looks really nice and is back up on display to be enjoyed for many years to come.
Cameron liked the restoration very much and he left a wonderful review for others to see how his restoration turned out. There are many many more reviews. To read more please like the page www.facebook.com/photorestoration
Mike had borrowed this large aerial photo of his old property and wanted to get this duplicated and restored for various members of his family. The photo is a large 20" x 30" print. Very typical of this type of photography. The age and sun had done their work and rendered the image with a strong red colour cast. The colour required restoration and a wide disbursement of small blemishes that always come with photos of this size needed to be removed.
Scanning For Restoration
One of the main difficulties with photo this size is digitising the image so it can be worked on the computer in Photoshop. Scanning such a large image requires either a VERY large flat bed scanner. They don't exist. Not that can be afforded. Or a series of smaller scans that are then stitched together in Photoshop to complete the whole picture. A third option is to photograph the entire image using a high resolution camera. This time we used lots of smaller scans to make up the whole photo. eight scans in total were used.
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
Hi Richard,
Thanks for that, it looks great.
Mike - Auckland
BEFORE AND AFTER
Click to enlarge and see if you can spot the joints.
Ted brought in some wonderful photos for restoration from his days as a pilot with Air New Zealand. The photos had faded and suffered from discolouration. This is very common and happens to just about every photograph. But we were able to restore the colour and brighten up the image.
There are many methods to restore colour but for this one we used curves adjustment layers with some masking here and there in Photoshop. The old livery of these Air New Zealand aircraft have come out looking much better and has taken Ted back to the good old days I'm sure.
Before and After Restoration of a discoloured photo
Amy sent me this very badly faded old photo by Courier Post. When it arrived it was virtually gone, it was barley visible. But I did a scan and using a variety of Multiple Layers and some heavy burn and dodging I was able to bring this old soldier back. But when the image became visible again.
Old Soldiers Should Never Fade Away
So did the hundreds of small cracks that covered the surface of the photo paper. You see this was not the original photo it was a copy that had been made at some time using a 'dye sublimation printer'. They are very commonplace and will most likely find them in your local pharmacy where they use them for passport photos or to provide prints from a Kodak kiosk. the problem is they don't last!! and this is how they end up... faded and cracked!
A few hours of extra work was needed to remove the cracks and finish off the restoration. To the delight of Amy who was over the moon. So much so she gave us a 5 star review on Google.
We had a photo which had almost disappeared due to sun damage and had been told it was not possible to save. Luckily I decided to have 1 last try and Richard did an amazing job giving a beautifully clear photo. Thanks.
Amy - Dunedin
Before and After Old Soldiers Should Never Fade Away
Todd sent me this very old and tired photo for restoration. It had suffered some severe mould damage and needed a good cleanup in Photoshop . The mould shows itself as light and dark patches. But because there are so many we can't use the spot removal or the healing brush in the normal way.
How to remove mould?
If you do then the light and dark patches are 'merged' and they become neither, ending up is a mid-tone grey. What was needed was to pick an area and decide if the surrounding blotches needed to be made lighter or darker to match the good areas.
Then using the healing tool set to either 'lighten' or 'darken' mode I was able to match the damaged area with good areas, without merging the two and making everything muddy and grey. The results are very good and the faces became much more visible and the whole photo looks very presentable.
Google Review
Richard at Pixelfix did the impossible by taking an old family photo from the late 1800s that was suffering from significant mould damage and fading. I didn't think he would be able to do much with it, but I was wrong. Thanks Richard for breathing new life into a cherished family portrait.
Susan from the corromandel sent me this badly faded Colourful wedding photo. Unfortunately all the colour had been bleached away by exposure to the sun. On top of that problem this photo was also taken in the seventies. So guess what. Yes. Honeycomb textured paper!! This always makes thing more tricky and adds to the workload. But we have good success removing this normally and the results once the fading had been restored looked good. Adding back the colour then made the photo complete again. We tweaked the colours to match Susan's request and the wedding photo is now being enjoyed again.
Wedding Disaster Unfortunately there were lots of moisture damage. I believe someone had spilt liquid on it then tried to wipe it dry.
Please don't do that at home. If you ever spill liquid on a photo then please don't wipe it. Just let it drip dry and hang it up somewhere. Once it is dry then contact us and we can then restore the damage. As you can see below It looks better than ever now it has been restored.
Sunlight can be a powerful destroyer of Black and White photos. It leads to fading and discolouration. This sad old photo was on its way to the ghostly 'faded photo bin'. But I was able to restore the fading and remove the discoloration to return this damaged photo back to its form glory. Black and white is such a beautify medium I think and this is a fine example of that. Barry was so please he ordered 3 copies with frames.
Hi Richard,
Payment made via internet banking just now. Yes you may use the images as an example if you wish to do so.
Looks fantastic!
- Barry | Auckland
The Beauty of Black and White Before and After Photo
Removing surface damage, including cracks and creases is an everyday occurrence in photo restoration. This is the most common damage to old photos. The damage is most often because of people folding the photographs. This cracks the photographic emulsion surface and reveals the paper underside of the photo.
How Do You Restore This?
To repair this kind of damage we must use the magic of Photoshop. A few different tools are used for this kind of restoration. but to restore the cracked areas and surface damage I use the 'healing brush' and the 'spot healing brush'. With the healing brush you can select which area you want to copy the pixels from and then select where to paste them.
As you paste the copied pixels, Photoshop analysis the surrounding pixels and adjusts the colour of pasted pixels to closely match those of the surrounding area. The Spot Healing Brush automatically selects the best area to copy from and matches to the surround pixels. This is a much quicker one step process as apposed to the Healing Brush 2 steps. But it can be less useful in very detailed areas.
