I’m enjoying these restorations. More and more they are convincing me that the part of this process I enjoy the most is the finish work. I love taking something that is damaged and making it look nice again. And some of these family pictures are so rare that they have such deep value.
This is my wife’s parents. She had an old faded 5×7 that was apparently made from a 2×2 original. It was framed without glass, so it was scratched up prettly badly and had dirt embedded in the emulsion.
Her hair is a little darker than I would like, but there just wasn’t any detail there. I’d rather have it too dark than washed out. Her neck was tough. The original was pretty bent up there so after being copied, then faded, then scanned it wasn’t pretty. I think its alright now.
It may not look like it but this is a step forward on my restoration process. Up until now I’ve pretty much just cleaned them up, modified the color balance and added contrast. On this one I replaced some missing elements. They are small (her hair and her chin) but they helped a lot.