Digital Restoration

Digital Restoration

As the years pass, photos that were taken to capture a moment in time can become damaged or faded.  You could have this type of photograph yourself.  It could be a picture from your childhood, or a picture that you got from a parent or grandparent.  With today’s digital restoration technology, these pictures can be repaired, and in many cases brought back to their original condition.

Digital photo restoration has become especially popular among genealogy enthusiasts.  In their searches for their families history they come into possession of a lot of old pictures of relatives in their family tree.  Many of these pictures are damaged and faded.  Having these pictures restored helps to preserve the family record.

The digital restoration techniques that are used to repair damaged photos is quite simple in theory, but in practice it can be extremely difficult to get right.  It starts with scanning the original photograph so it is converted to a digital format.  In that format the image can be easily altered to get the desired results.  Again, although it is easy to make changes in this format, it is not always so easy to get right.

Once the picture has been scanned into digital format the technician must begin to repair the damaged areas.  This is a matter of “repainting” the area that was affected.  Although not particularly difficult, it can be rather tedious, and it does take time to get it right.  It is not simply a matter of coloring a crease away.  The details must be duplicated.  The more detailed that area is, the more difficult it is to get it right.  If the crease runs across the subjects head, the different colourations and textures of the hair need to be accounted for. Digital restoration requires a keen eye to get it right and make it unnoticeable on the end product.

The next step in  digital restoration involves restoring the proper contrast to the picture.  As older pictures age they can begin to fade.  Contrast is lost and smaller details can no longer be seen.  Photo professional’s use a tool called a “Histogram” that allows them to sharpen the contrast and bring many of the lost details back.  This is another thing that sounds easier in theory than it is in practice.  If this is not done correctly the end picture will not look natural.  If the contrast is too sharp the final image could look cartoonish, and will not be a true representation of the original snapshot.

While digital restoration can be accomplished by home photo enthusiasts, for most people it is a task best left to a professional.  When done by someone that has the training and experience, the final result will look as good, or better than the original photograph.