restoration

The Intricate Work in Restoring Photos for a Vietnam Veteran

A while back, a young man contacted me about a photo digitization and restoration project for his grandfather, who served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. They had some photographs from this period in his life—of friends, scenery, and the culture of Vietnam—that they wanted to use for an album.

Restoring an 85-Year-Old Leica Camera

Maximilian Heinrich of Analog Insights recently inherited an 85-year-old Leica camera and handed it off to his friend Jules for repair and restoration. This 15-minute video is about the camera's journey from nearly being passed on to a camera store to being brought back to form.

You Can Restore an Old Pelican Case with a Heat Gun

I was recently offered a free Pelican case, and she seemed too young to die. She was structurally sound, so I felt some plastic surgery would make her look 10 years younger... and it did.

Rare Photos of Hitler from Glass Plates by His Personal Photographer

Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, was one of the infamous dictator's primary propagandists, and tens of thousands of the photographer's photos exist on glass plate negatives. Now a large number of those rare photos are being revealed with a new level of clarity through a digitization effort by the National Archives.

These Photo Restorations May Boggle Your Mind

Tetyana Dyachenko is a Ukrainian photo retoucher who often does restorations of vintage photos that are extremely damaged -- often seemingly beyond recovery. Yet using her Photoshop skills, Dyachenko is able to recover (and recreate) extremely fine details in the photos.

Restoring the Photos of Charles Conlon, A Pioneer of Baseball Photography

Charles M. Conlon was an early 20th century American photographer who was among the first to regularly photograph baseball games and players. Although he shot many iconic early photos of the sport, his name was largely unknown until 1990, when 8,000+ of his negatives were found in the archives of Sporting News.

Many of the photos were heavily marked, and the Digital Archive Project at the National Baseball Hall of Fame has been working to restore those images for future generations.

Timelapse: Restoring an Old, Ripped-Up Photo

Here's a great look at how far Photoshop can go in restoring a heavily damaged photo print. Argentinian photo restorer Hernan Folmer made the time-lapse above showing how he reconstructed an old photo last year using Photoshop CC. The video shows 2 hours of work in Photoshop CC condensed into 2 minutes.

The Magic of a Chemical Photo Restoration Process

If given an old print to restore, most photographers these days would probably choose to scan it and fix the image up in Photoshop. Japanese restoration expert Murabayashi Takao uses a different technique: one that involves the magic of chemical processes. Watch and be amazed in the 10-minute video above.

How to Clean Up Your Old Cameras

Treasures are often buried under dirt. Well, that's usually the case, anyway. Treasures for photographers may mean finding a working copy of their dream camera at a flea market or on the second-hand camera market. However, more often than not, the camera may not be looking great.

Lost Orson Welles Film Rediscovered and Restored by George Eastman House

When legendary director Orson Welles of "Citizen Kane" fame was all of 23 years old, he made his first movie meant to be seen by a paying public. Dubbed "Too Much Johnson," the silent slapstick comedy was to be shown in three parts, one before each act of a Welles' adaptation of the 1894 play by William Gillette.

The play wound up opening to disastrous reviews without the film, and in a tragic turn of events, what was thought to be the only copy of the film was destroyed in a fire at Welles' villa in Spain. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.

Video: Photo Restoration and Colorization Demonstrated Through a Time-Lapse

Digital image editing technology -- culturally controversial uses aside -- has enabled us to do some pretty amazing things. In the past, we shared a video that showed how the Internet came together to restore a WWII veteran's Navy photo to its former glory.

This time, we get to see the process in action, as Redditor thehatersalad shows us the impressive restoration and colorization work he did on an old photo of user f2ISO100's grandmother -- time-lapse style.

Redditors Pitch In to Help Restore an 87-Year-Old Grandfather’s WWII Photo

Redditor Steven Withey's grandfather Derek is an 87-year-old WWII veteran who served in the Royal Navy, and a little while back he showed his grandson a badly damaged Navy photo (of a photo) of himself as a 20-year-old.

He had showed him the photo in the hopes that his technologically savvy grandson could maybe touch it up a bit, but given the massive creases and tears he didn't have much hope. It turns out he needn't have worried, because in this particular case, Reddit came to the rescue.

Modern Editing Software Used to Improve Film Footage from the Early 1900s

Film footage from the early 1900's, when hand-cranked cameras were all the technology available, aren't exactly high-quality. Choppy, jumpy, and sped-up, the people in these films look anything but natural.

One YouTuber, however, has taken it upon himself to enhance some footage from this time period and, in the process, produced something much closer to today's standards of clarity and stability.

Operation Photo Rescue Restores Photos Damaged in Natural Disasters for Free

Natural disasters are tragic for many reasons. Assuming, most importantly, that you and your loved ones come through one such disaster healthy, you immediately begin the process of putting your life back together. And even though top priorities are probably your home, cars, critical documents, and so on, those things are replaceable; the photos that may have also been damaged or destroyed are not.

Time-Lapse Videos of Old B&W Photos Being Infused with Color

Earlier this year, we shared some amazing work by Swedish retoucher Sanna Dullaway, who takes historical B&W photographs and colorizes them. YouTube user IColoredItForYou is another master of restoring, retouching, and colorizing, but what's awesome about his work is that he creates behind-the-scenes videos showing how the edits are done. The above time-lapse video shows how he recently used Photoshop to colorize Margaret Bourke-White's famous 1937 photograph, titled "Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky".