Detail Photography

Is it possible to improve poorly taken, old photographs, from times gone past?

A question I get asked regularly. Most of the photographs I get given to work on are special. Special – important, in that they are often the only copy of a particular photograph in existence and the original negative gone or lost It is not uncommon for me to be told that this is the ‘ONLY’ photograph in existence or this family.

Often these photographs are just not good. Often poorly taken by someone who just snaps away rather than carefully working on composition and so on. On top of that there is also the usual time, poor storage and a fair bit of neglect that ‘does-in’ most old photographs.

Did you know that often, I can take an old photograph, digitise it, renovate it and then enlarge the new file to make a bigger photo suitable for framing?

My photograph today shows a before and after.
What do you think?

Photographs may not be copied, published, or stored without express permission of the copyright holder.

©2023 Pete Jenkins @ Detail - Photography – Old photographs fade and get damaged, but they can often be digitised and repaired.

Old photographs fade and get damaged, but they can often be digitised and repaired.
Back in the days of hand-processing and printing, most photographs were actually handled rather well.

It is true that there were a few cowboys who did not really know what they were doing, yet did it anyway, and there are always ‘give-it-a-go’ amateurs who never quite ‘got it’, however most of the 100 years plus photographs that I get given to work on, were clearly competently produced. That goes with monochrome photographs in general.
Machine printing however is a different kettle of fish.

I digress.

Today’s photograph is competently taken, processed, and printed but it has suffered light damage. At least half a century old, time has not treated it well. There is little physical damage – often prints of this age are scuffed, torn, creased and suffered other ‘use’ marks, however there is a lot of less obvious collateral damage, the most obvious being the fading.
A deep scan to a high resolution will often capture back some of this detail (undetectable by the human eye).

My photographs today show a set of before and after. I have also included a second ‘after’ print which I have added a sepia tint.

Back in the days of chemical printing sepia toning (as it was called) was not a colouring of the print, but rather a secondary tertiary chemical process which replaced the silver halide of the original print with a sulphide. The reason for doing this originally was to give the print a longer life as the sulphide compound was less susceptible to light damage. The warmer ‘brown’ tone was simply a pleasing side effect.
What do you think?


Photographs may not be copied, published, or stored without express permission of the copyright holder.

©2023 Pete Jenkins @ Detail - Photography – Old photographs fade and get damaged, but they can often be digitised and repaired.