A friend of mine, Jean-Claude Langer, asked me to restore a cherished old B & W photo he had of his father. The picture (photo #1), as you can see, was in bad shape with some; missing pieces, unseemly folds, fading and staining. The image was taken in Paris about 1931 and Jean-Claude asked me to restore it, but at the same time keep the old feeling it has.

When I do photo restorations for pixlfixl customers, certain issues consistently come up related to seeing the newly restored images. All the photos I work on are damaged to varying degrees and have sometimes been this way for quite a long time. Because of this, customers sometimes get used to and attached to the poor condition of their images. Many have never seen the photos in their original pristine condition, so when they see them restored they’re frequently very surprised. It’s sort of like the first time you saw a picture of one your parents when they were a child. It’s a bit disconcerting at first, but then it makes sense.

What follows is an explanation of what I actually did to restore Jean-Claude’s photograph. The first thing I do whenever I’m given a photo that’s faded over time, is I desaturate it (take the color out). I do this because I’ve found in practically all cases that fading, due to age, leads to uneven discoloration. Desaturating the tones brings everything into the same color space. At the end of the restoration process I’ll add an overall color tone (usually a variety of sepia), if it’s requested. Photo #2 shows what the original image looks like after it’s been desaturated.

My next task is to restore the tonal range of the image. Old B & W photos fade over time because the silver emulsion that makes up the image is susceptible to chemicals in the air as well as the effects of exposure to light. Fading makes the dark values lose their richness (they get lighter) and the light values get muddy.  Luckily I can reverse this in Photoshop and do it with a great amount of control.  The two ways I like to do this are to use the “image-> adjustment-> levels” or “image-> adjustment-> curve” tools. The trick is to restore the darkest shadow tones, the brightest highlight tones and set the intermediate grey values where they look best. Photo #3 shows the result of using the curve tool to do this. You see an immediate improvement during this step. An essential part of doing this effectively is having your monitor calibrated correctly, and viewing your image with a look-up that will show you what your image will look like when it’s printed on a specific paper. In Photoshop you set this up with “view-> proof set-up”  and “view-> proof colors“. I can’t emphasize enough the importance that what you see on your monitor accurately shows you what it will look like when printed. Without doing this, you can end up wasting a lot of time and paper when printing.

After balancing the tones I’m now ready to clean the image up. I remove the folds, tears, add the missing pieces and clean up the sky using the “healing brush” and “clone-stamp” tools. This is the most time-consuming part of the process and requires a lot of attention to detail. I make sure that when I clone in the grass I don’t have any noticeable repeating patterns and that I respect the depth of field that happens on the grass plane. Another interesting restoration question is how much one should do to to make the image look better. Where does one stop? For this photo Jean-Claude gave clear direction beforehand that he wanted the little bush removed that was just to the left of his Dad’s hair. After seeing the restoration preview proof on-line (photo #4), Jean-Claude also decided that he wanted the wood debris in the grass on the left side removed and the buildings under/behind the Eiffel Tower to be darker. These requests were easily accomplished and I think they make the image cleaner and stronger (photo #5). I’m of the opinion that doing whatever you can to help the image be more effective is alright, as long as it’s in the spirit of what you believe was the original intent of the photographer. This is a very subjective area (of course) and open to whatever interpretation you may assume.

Photo #6 is the final restoration. The warm color tone was added back, in order to give the image a feeling of age.

Here’s what Jean-Claude had to say after seeing the restoration,

Drew,

I want to thank you for giving me the precious opportunity of a renewed dialog with my dad, André, thru the time machine device that is a restored photograph. I was most impressed with your respect of the integrity of the original, and your impeccable technical ability to achieve it. You were also most gracious in complying with my added request for changes, as we both agreed that it was for the better.

All in all, a great experience.

Merci,

Jean-Claude

I start by telling them that photography has been a big part of my life since I was a kid. I grew up in NYC, and my first real exposure to photography was back in grade school (this is in the 1960’s mind you). The science teacher at the school I went to did all sorts of wonderful hands-on projects with us. My favorite was taking a self-portrait with a large format camera. After unloading the film from the camera, we went into the smelly darkroom and were shown how to develop film and make contact prints. Seeing the image appear in the developer tray, on that precious photo paper, was what really hooked me. Now that was magic! 

Skip forward forty years and people are using computers to do the same kind of darkroom magic, except with a whole lot more control. The tool of choice from the start has been Photoshop. My fourteen year experience as a digital artist at Industrial Light & Magic trained me to look at images and figure out strategies to manipulate them. Every time I restore a damaged photo, I treat it like it’s a puzzle. First, it’s brainstorming what needs to get done, and then figuring out how to do it. Each photo presents itself with a unique set of challenges. This is what makes the work so much fun for me.

I’m going to talk a bit about the thought processes I had, and the techniques I used, to restore the photo below on the left. The soldier is my father in-law, Harold Goldsmith. Taken in 1946 at Okinawa, where he was in the 494th Bomb Group doing code cryptography. I love the picture because it’s so evocative of it’s time and of Harold’s wry sense of humor.

When www.pixlfixl.com gets a photo like this one, the first thing I do is just take a long look at the picture. I try to identify the subject(s) of interest and any other important elements. I also think about what motivated the photographer or the subject to make the image. Answering these questions helps me determine what it is I need to do to make the image come alive.

In this picture there’s no mystery to the subject. It’s a visual one-liner. What did strike me immediately was the composition.  I thought the picture could be improved by cropping it to give it a more pleasing balance. Also removing some of the distractions, like the sun glare on the plane’s window, the auto behind the plane and the dark patch on the right side of the plane, would all help to keep your eye on the main subject. At the same time I decided to slightly adjust the tonal range by darkening the darkest darks and lightening the other values. Because the photo’s focus was a little soft, I subtly sharpened just Harold’s face.

One of the real challenges in photo restoration is always to make changes that reinforce the spirit of the photo, and at the same time have the modifications be invisible. If someone sees my restored photo and senses that something’s missing or notices anything that doesn’t look right, then I’ve failed. That’s the test!