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Old Photo Restoration

thescreensavers

thescreensavers

Diamond Member
I posted in the software forum and people that replied said there wasn't any software that could do it and that I should post some of the pics to see if they can be restored.

my scanner can only go up to 600dpi and its uses LED indirect exposure

I can scan in JPG/Exif , BMP , TIFF

I don't know whats best, I just did JPG, if you need me to rescan I can.


Here are two of the worst photo's
Pic 1
Pic 2

sorry for the specs of dirt or what not, I don't know if they are on the photo or inside my scanner, I cleaned the outside of the glass.


I got like 10 others as well. my parents are willing to pay a reasonable price to restore them all. If someone can do a good job on these two photos let me know.


Thanks 🙂
 
Photo restoration companies.

I personally am not familiar with this type of work but it's probably better to get it done professionally. Most of the services seem to start at about $20-30 per photo. The problem is that while scratches are easy and a quickie job can be done in a couple hours, restoration of color and stuff takes a lot of time.
 
The problem with these pictures is that the color information just isn't there. It's pretty much just a duotone photo - like black and white photos with only the two colors of black and white, these only have yellow and red. You don't have the full color spectrum here to reconstruct the original colors. You wouldn't be restoring these photos - you'd be recreating them - painting in colors for the skin, deciding what colors the dress should be (blue? purple? red? brown?), eyes, hair, background, etc. These also don't have the necessary resolution available. 600dpi is perfectly adequate, but the original photo itself just doesn't have the resolution. The restorer would have to create texture and details from scratch.

All of this is 100% manual work with a very large amount of artistic license, and you'd have to go to a photo restoration professional.

It's like an old one of a kind book with a lot of the pages burned. You're never going to restore it to its original content - you're just going to have to recreate what you think should have been there. Make up stuff. No software will be able to do this automatically.
 
The flip side is that if you're ok with the final images being black & white, it'd be much easier/less expensive/more accurate.

Just a thought.
 
Yeah, basically what fuzzy said is what I was thinking. To add to it, it'll almost be like those old black and white films that get colorized. There is no original color data and an artist (or many in the case of movies) add color to it. It's why the movies look almost fake at times because the color just doesn't look as natural.

Take a look at some of the web sites in the link I provided. They have examples of photos that have been recolored. If you're ok with how those examples turn out then give it a shot.

Alternatively, and probably the best bet is to do what rivan suggested and get it converted into black and white images.
 
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