PHOTORESTORICS
DIGITAL PHOTO RETOUCHING AND RESTORATION
of Antique, Vintage, and Damaged Photographs
Services to Publishers, Advertising Agencies, Web Site Owners, Museums, Libraries,
Historical Societies, Genealogical Societies, Film-Makers, TV Producers, Small Businesses,
and Individuals in the Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle areas and Worldwide
If you've got great antique photographs that have fallen on hard times, I can help. My name is Joelle Steele, and since 1994 I have been digitally repairing, retouching, and restoring damaged photos. I digitally repair black-and-white, color, hand-tinted, and sepia-toned (silver to sulfide conversion) images, such as old studio portraits, snapshots, Polaroids, slides, negatives, and a vast array of antique Daguerreotypes (silver plates), ambrotypes (glass negatives), tintypes (a.k.a. ferrotypes, melainotypes, or iron plates), and gemtypes (miniature tintypes). I can repair (or improve) fading and discoloration; spots (mold and mildew, a.k.a. "foxing") and blotches; tears, scratches and scuffs; creases, cracks, dog-ears, and wrinkles; moisture and water streaking; and unwanted signatures or other writing. When damage is so severe that it covers a part of a face, it is sometimes even possible for me to reconstruct the missing part.
Below is some background about digital photo restoration. You can see more before-and-after samples of my restorations on my Gallery page.
LEFT: Circa 1890s sepia photo with fading and discoloration, now restored, enhanced, and converted to black and white. Photo of Phoebe Apperson Hearst painting, courtesy of Mila Turlofson.
RIGHT: 1916 black and white photo with discoloration and fading, now restored, converted back to black-and-white, and re-cropped. Photo of car on 17-mile Drive in Pebble Beach, California, courtesy of Ford Motor Company.
Color Toning and Color Correcting
Old sepia tones originally had a very reddish-brown tint, and when they are badly faded they will look pink. Photos that have a yellowish look are just old black-and-whites in which the chemicals have gone bad. Old color photos can turn overly red or blue with age. I can correct the colors in any photo, restoring the original colors or making them into black-and-whites, or tinting them light brown, which is a popular color request for old photos. Above are examples of color correcting and conversions to black-and-white.
ABOVE: 1960s snapshot with severe discoloration, now color-corrected. Photo of Elsie and Ted Ness and friends, courtesy of Patricia Ness.
Repairing Damage to Photos
In the "before" Daguerreotype below, the subject, photography pioneer Louis Daguerre, is covered with hundreds of small white spots that took almost two hours to digitally remove. Old photographs suffer greatly from years of mishandling and poor storage. The original may be irreparable, but thanks to today's technology, all those spots, creases, discolorations, and other damages can be digitally repaired, and you'll have a brand new image that looks as good as the day the original was taken. Your original will not be altered or harmed. And, once you receive the digital file of the restored image, you can have it printed out and you can share it with others!
ABOVE: 1849 Daguerreotype with hundreds of small white mold spots. Photo of Louis Daguerre by Jean-Baptiste Sabatier Blot.
PHOTOGRAPHS OF PEOPLE OF COLOR
The two restorations below turned out very well, but old Daguerreotypes of people of color can be very challenging to restore. The extremely long photographic exposure times made dark areas appear even darker. Most of the time, digitally lightening these images will bring out the details of the face and clothing, but it will not improve the photo's clarity if it was not clear to begin with.
LEFT: Daguerreotype. Former slave in New York City holding Georgina Holmes, photographer unidentified, courtesy of the Daguerreian Society.
RIGHT: 1851 Daguerreotype. California Native American Boy by Isaac Wallace Baker, courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California.
Reconstructions
Sometimes damage is so severe that it covers a part of the face, such as an eye or an ear, or something else in the photo. In the first photo below, the acetate film negative was badly cracked and the ear was partially gone as a result. I restored the photo and reconstructed the missing part of the ear. This does not always work out well. I can only do so much, especially if I don't have much to work with or don't have anything to compare it to as I do the reconstruction. The second photo below had damage over a ruffled part of a dress, and I had to reconstruct the ruffles the best that I could. In this case, I had two other rows of ruffles to compare to when rebuilding that part of the image.
LEFT: 1940s acetate film negative. Photo of Eugene Kinckle Jones, courtesy of the Scurlock Collection, Smithsonian Institution.
RIGHT: 1890s tintype. Photo courtesy of Laura Watson.
Photos That Can't Be Restored
Sad but true, some photos are just too damaged for complete restoration. There may simply not be enough detail in a photo to begin with, or the damage may be so extensive that I can't make it look much better.
LEFT: This postage stamp-size photo was yellowed, creased, and blurred, and while it was restored and enlarged slightly, it will always remain blurred. Photo of Victoria Kazlauskas, courtesy of Vicki Kazlauskas.
RIGHT: This 1940s acetate film negative is badly damaged due to cracking of the film, and it can be restored, but it would be very time-consuming and costly to do so. Photo of Rev. Walter H. Brooks, courtesy of the Scurlock Collection, Smithsonian Institution.
ABOVE: This old Polaroid could only be moderately improved because it was a victim of bad photo finishing compounded by the lack of a good lens. Photo of Mabel Louise Buzzini Martelli Perrino, Joelle's paternal grandmother.
PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHS
Panoramic photos can be as small as 12" wide or as large as 60" wide. If you do not already have a high resolution file of your panoramic photo, I can either photograph it or scan it, depending on its size. If I scan, it must be done in sections which I then digitally piece back together before I do your restoration.
ABOVE: 1920s era 42"-wide panoramic photo that was yellowed and faded. It was scanned in five parts, reassembled, and restored.
