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Vintage photographs present some very common problems. Over time, the image fades because of age; developing procedures; the paper it was printed on; or exposure to the sun, extreme heat, or dampness. Dampness can cause even more harm because mold can grow, which eats away the coating on the photos, and damage the paper, as well. In many cases, multiple culprits have been and are at work, and you have multiple problems — faded image content along with scuffs, scratches, stains, mold, dust, and outright damage in the form of rips, tears, and missing corners.
When you face damages like this, you need to perform a little triage. What do you do first? Improve the color? Replace the corner? Clean up the scratches and scuff marks? It really depends on the location and severity of the problems and which problems bother you the most.
Consider these ideas for how to approach an image with multiple problems:
- If your picture has multiple problems in a single area, solving one may solve the other(s). Consider a torn corner with a big stain on it. If you paste content from the opposite corner over it (rotating the pasted content, of course), you may get rid of the stain, too (assuming that the other corner isn't similarly stained).
- If a portion of the edge or frame is missing, try to crop out the damaged part. When you can crop around the image, you eliminate the need to replace the missing corner or side. Of course, you have to consider whether the missing portion includes part of the image that's important to the composition of the image.
- Assess the damage if you can't crop it out. If you can't crop, how bad is the damage? Does it lend an air of history to the picture? Part of the charm of vintage photos is that they look old. The places, people, clothes, scenery, and architecture all add to that charm. So if the photo itself looks like it was taken in 1897, what's the harm in that? If the picture has damage on someone's face or across the front of the family home, yes, try to fix it. If the damage is on the periphery or doesn't detract from the overall appeal of the image, consider leaving it alone.
- Tackle structural problems first. First replace that missing corner or fill in that hole or deep crack in the photo. Then go about improving color quality, eliminating tiny scratches and spots, or bringing out detail lost to fading or bad lighting.
- Work slowly and deliberately. Don't try to work fast or do too many things at once. Your results show your approach, and a slap-dash job leaves you with a slap-dash photo. If the picture is that precious or historically important, it's worth laboring over, zooming in to get things right, editing pixel by pixel.
 | When restoring photos, you probably want to scan the photo at a fairly high resolution (from 300 to 600 samples per inch, or spi). You can always reduce file size later when optimizing a photo for use on the Web or if you need to send the file via e-mail or store it on some low-density disk. By scanning it at a high resolution, you get all the color, light, and texture information possible, and all that information gives you more to work with. If you scan at lower resolution and a face's features have been lost to time, you don't have as many colors and details to work with as you rebuild that face. When the image looks right, you can reduce the resolution for a more reasonably sized file. You end up with a photo that's about the same resolution as any ordinary photo that you scan, but you'll be glad that you had some extra information to work with during the restoration. |
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