Restoring Colour and Black & White Damaged Photographs.
Many people have old damaged black and white or colour photos. The damage may be a rip, crease, smudge, watermark or any number of issues, however using the latest technology it is possible to restore these images. The success of the restoration is obviously reliant on just how bad the original photograph is, and while most photographs can be cleaned up to great success, there are others that simply won't look 100% new.
Adding Colourisation To Old Black & White Photos.
In addition to restoring photographs it is also possible to colourise them back to something resembling the time period they are from. Although this can be done totally blind, using common sense, if images are supplied where colour of garments, hair, clothes etc are known, this will make them more authentic. This process works best on simpler photographs, although more complex photographs are possible to colourise.
In the example on the right you see a cleaned up version of the original black and white image, which has had minor work done to it, followed by a test copy which was used to set the coloured areas, followed by the final photograph which represents the actual colours of the clothes that were worn on the day.
This photograph works as it has minimum disruption in the background, and the main subjects are well defined.
In this example on the right, you can see the original state of the black and white photograph. New white borders were added to the colourised version, plus as accurate colours as possible based on memories and common sense while thinking about the time frame that the photograph was taken (around 1972).
Although more complex than the above example, it works as there is plenty of negative space behind.
Old school photographs are an ideal candidate for restoration. They are simple, and usually have less in the background. As this is a closer photograph you can see that the eye colours can match the persons original eye colour, and the clothes also are colour as worn back when the photograph was taken.
Restoration was also performed on the tears in the photograph, ensuring the photo looks as good as the day it was taken.
