Digital Photo Restoration is essential because millions of photographs in physical form are digitized to preserve memories. Why?
Unfortunately, most of these collections are damaged, whether in the form of rough handling, unsafe storage, or the simple fact that the physical materials degrade over time no matter how carefully they’re treated.
When a digitization team creates a digital copy of those photographs, they’re capturing an image of the physical picture as it exists. This will include the fading, scratches, and other issues that may come with it. But with digital restoration, we can turn back time on these digital images, to make them look as close as how they looked when the original photo was taken.
This technique of digitizing old photos and bringing them back to life is called photo restoration. The technique uses specific digital restoration tools to re-create or improve digital versions of old and worn-out photographs.
Restoring Faded Photographs or Digital Photo Restoration
Fading is one of the, if not the most common issues with older photographs, whether they’re color, sepia, or black and white.
This is a result of the pigment breakdown in the photo, accelerated by a variety of environmental factors, one of the most common being UV light and the other one being acid!
As you may know, most papers are made from wood. And wood contains varying amounts of lignin. As the lignin in paper breaks down, it produces acid. If photos are being stored in contact with wood, paper with lignin, or other acidic materials like adhesives, this will contribute to degradation and fading.
For photos that have already experienced fading, we can digitize and restore them by darkening the shadows and deepening colors, while keeping an eye to ensure that the values stay true to the original image.
Repairing Physical Damage on a Digital Photo
Tears, folds, scratches, stains, and more! There’s a lot that can happen to a photograph over some time. How well a flaw can be fixed during the process of Digital Photo Restoration depends mostly on the size and location of the damage.
Most commonly, these digital repairs are done by concealing the damaged area behind visual elements taken from other parts of the photo. This means that flaws on solid backgrounds or repeating patterns will be easiest to cover and blend in. Other methods, such as manually tightening a stain, may be used when the damage is in a more complex area.
Large Portions of Photo Loss
What should you do if a large portion of the photo is severely damaged or completely missing?
Don’t worry, not all hope is lost!
Thanks to generative AI technology, it is possible to “restore” the image even in such conditions. The program can look at the parts of an image that remain and generate options for what the missing part would have been most likely to look like and it’s surprisingly accurate on most occasions.
Digitization and retouching can help in replacing smaller sections of loss or even large pieces of the background. But at the same time, don’t consider this as a useful technique when it comes to correcting crucial parts of the photo, such as people’s faces.
Reversing the Yellow effect
Yellowing of your photos is a result of direct sunlight falling upon them over some time, this tends to be especially common in color photographs taken with home cameras in the 1990s or before that. When color photographs first came into the picture, they were not as stable as the ones today are.
Since different dyes break down at different rates, this leads to the most stable colors, usually yellow, staying longer and causing a color cast over the image.
To reverse this process, the photo must be digitized, turned to black and white, and then colorized accordingly. Thus, eliminating the yellow effect and restoring the original color of the photo.
How Picabees can give your old photos a new lease of Life
Now that you’ve realized that you can, in fact, restore your old photos. You must be thinking, “Where can I get them restored at an affordable price?”.
The answer to your burning question is Picabees!
We’ve been specializing in providing photo restoration services all around the world for over 8 years now. With hundreds of five-star reviews from clients and thousands of images restored with 99% accuracy, not going with us would be a no-brainer.
To top with what we mentioned, we will repair your cherished photos with great turn-around time and at a very reasonable price. Send us an email with your request to know more.