It's not just printing services that we offer here at First Paige. Our team of talented graphic designers lend their skills to offer many different services. One such area in the past few weeks is photo restoration. We're tasked with repairing old and damaged photos that have seen better days, then producing new copies to be framed or kept as treasured memories. The aim of our photo restoration and printing is to recreate the appearance of the original photo as though it was printed today. It's a service we enjoy providing, as most customers probably cannot remember what that photo looked like without the damage.
It all starts with the digital photo restoration. Taking a high-resolution scan of the old photo on our scanner helps provide the best possible starting place, capturing every detail and every bit of wear-and-tear that needs to be fixed (even the damage that's hard to see). Then we get down to the photoshop editing. Every scratch and crack will be removed by cloning an area around them to get the best resemblance of the original printed photograph and any staining or marks on the image will also be fixed by picking up the original colour of that area. The final part was to match the photo to the intended colours. For the two photo restorations we did recently, one needed to have the tones and colours matched exactly to the original, whereas the other had been more discoloured over time, so we converted to full black and white at the customer's request.
Now, we are still a printing shop, so of course we printed the new copies as well. The new photos can be printed and scaled to whatever size you need. If it's going back into the same frame as before, or you've got an old frame you'd like to use, we can scale the photo to the exact dimensions to fit. We can also replicate the original borders that were on the image so that it looks just like the original and then print on to either a matt or glossy card for to get the best finish for each print.
It may be difficult work, but it's definitely a fun task to take on. It's nice seeing the smiles on the customers' faces at the end as it shows us that it's a job well done!