Hi, all.

My wife and I have had two pictures of our newborn babies hanging on the wall along our staircase for many years. They have been in direct sunlight and as a result have faded quite a bit. Of course, these pictures were taken before digital cameras were around, so we only have these original photographs.

We are re-doing our entrance way and would like to somehow digitally restore and reprint these photographs as close to original quality as possible and hang them back up on the wall. How would you recommend we do that? I've already had the pictures scanned into PDF format (at Staples). I don't have any good image enhancement software to use. Any free apps I could use that have guidance on how to go about it?

Thanks for any help you can provide. These are the types of pictures that mean the most.

Chris

Find somebody with a really good quality scanner and adept with Photoshop.

Doing a really good job will take some skill and experience, but even a relative amateur can improve the faded versions. And you don't have anything to loose - the scan won't hurt the print.

Do you have the negative, by any chance?

Thanks for the reply, jhe. I don’t think we have the negatives because the photos were taken by a professional photographer. I guess we could try to remember who that was! But that was back in 2001-2003 and 500 miles away in NH. We were searching thru our old photo albums last night and found a few smaller different versions of one of them. But not both. Maybe my in-laws have a copy. I’ll have to check with them.

JHE is spot on. An experienced restorer (or amateur) with the skills can restore those and supply you with a digital copy.

I think it would be worth it to explore finding the original photographer. He/she was probably someone with an office near where you lived, and 18 years is not a long time for a professional.

I don't know about pdf format, but if you can get a gif, jpg, or bitmap I'm sure that any of several software packages could improve it a lot. Even Adobe Lightroom has a "Dehaze" filter that works wonders.

flashguy

I can do it…

How many do you have and what size?

I have a pro scanner and have restored pics like you describe, it’s pretty easy.

The digital restoration would be easy enough. Any photographer who actually touches up photos (instead of just applying a preset to all their photos) should be able to do it--provided they have a flatbed scanner with acceptable bit depth and resolution.

You can/should be able to call around local photographers and see if anyone has the scanner and wants to take on a job. Might be pricey as a one-off project.

There are also more than a few photo restoration services online and locally. They'll be setup to scan and restore photos quickly and in bulk. However, because they do their restoration in bulk and at scale, most are using software with AI and little human intervention to do the restoration. For some photos, this works out great. For others, sometimes a human with an artistic touch is needed to get colors right.

Edit: I see that you've already had the photos scanned as PDF at Staples. I'm happy to take a look and see if I can help. I'm not confident that the PDF will have full 48bit/1200dpi resolution (the file size should be 100mb+), but I'm happy to do what I can with what you have. My email is in my profile.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris17404:
Thanks for the reply, jhe. I don’t think we have the negatives because the photos were taken by a professional photographer. I guess we could try to remember who that was! But that was back in 2001-2003 and 500 miles away in NH. We were searching thru our old photo albums last night and found a few smaller different versions of one of them. But not both. Maybe my in-laws have a copy. I’ll have to check with them.

If the photographer is still around, he might have the negatives or original digital files. If so, he'd be happy to make you a new print. Years ago, I worked for a big commercial photolab, and we handled the developing and printing for a local, but big portrait studio. We stored their negatives and had them going back decades. Maybe you'll get lucky.