Hi all,
I know there are several great photographers on this forum so I am looking to you all for some advice. I have family photos on tin and paper that are very old and fading. I am in the Houston area and would like to find someone to restore and scan all these photos. I fear there are some that are so faded there is no hope. Adding a link below to some that are in better condition. I have a lot of these so this is going to be a long project.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41799285@N04/sets/72157633353810180/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/41799285@N04/sets/72157633353810180/)
Any advice, especially local recommendations would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
My recommendation would be to find someone with a good hi-res scanner to digitize them for you (no photography skill required).. you can even buy combo scanner/printers at Best Buy, if you decide to do it yourself. Mine's a little older, I'm sure the resolution is better on the new models than it was six years ago.
Once they're all scanned in at the highest quality you can set the software to, then you can upload them to any photo lab's web application (like walmart's or office depot, etc) and have them re-printed as new photos.
Thanks Gwen! I will look into that.
Professional photo restoration can be VERY expensive. If you want to take the time yourself, I would recommend, as Gwen said, a good flatbed scanner, and Adobe Photoshop. I've taken old photos and done them myself. It's time consuming, but you can restore a photo to nearly original with enough time.
Software has gotten intelligent enough that it can sense the colours and contrast on an image and recover most of what has been lost over time. I've used Photoshop on 50-year-old faded colour prints, and with a single press of a button, restored the colour almost perfectly.
Basically, it takes either a lot of time (DIY) or a lot of money (professional).
Thanks Merlin! Yep the pros can be expensive. I have a few photos that I may take to get looked at to see if they can even be worked with. But for the most part I will probably get some sort of scanner to work on the bulk of what I have.