Photo Restoration services

At Photo Creative Ltd we can transform your old photographs into the flawless images they once were! Digital methods have made the art of photograph restoration a much simpler task, allowing us to work on a digital image instead of the original photograph, slide or negative. Your photograph can be restored to it's original state without altering the original image. Old photographs can be completely renewed by cleaning up mildew, water stains, spots, and tears. The contrast and colour can be brought back to faded photographs. Photo Creative guarantees 100% satisfaction with quick reliable service.

At Photo Creative, the process begins with the scanning of the original photograph, document, negative or slide to create a high-resolution digital copy that is then used for the restoration itself. This ensures that your original photo is returned to you completely unaltered. We will give you an estimate of the cost and time needed to complete the restoration before the process begins.

Some of our restoration services include...

Restoration of old and damaged photos and documents
Removal of scratches and tears repaired
Removal of subjects and distractions
Photo montages and collages
Colour cast /exposure correction
Removal of dirt and stains
Restoration of faded photos
Black and white photos converted into full colour
Numerous photos blended together
Water, smoke and fire damage restored
High quality scanning of photos and artwork
Archiving of all photos to CD or DVD
Film, negatives and slides scanned
Mobile service available

...plus many other services

Have you tried our very popular online photo/image editing service? You can email us a photo and we will give you a quote within one hour. If you are happy to go ahead we can have your photo fully restored/enhanced or altered to exactly what you require within 24 hours. Quick professional service guaranteed.

Please visit our Photo Restoration portfolio or contact us with any requests you may have.

Photo scanning information

For the best results we recommend that you,

1. Check your photos for dirt, or smudges. Gently remove surface dust and dirt with a soft cloth or lint-free photo wipe.

2. Check the scanner glass for hair, fingerprints, or smudges. Use a lint-free pad or cloth to thoroughly clean the glass (basically anything which is sold as safe for cleaning camera lenses will also work for your scanner).

3. Specify the type of scan. If you're scanning photos, you have a basic choice of colour photos or black and white. Always scan in RGB and in COLOUR, even if the photo is black & white. This is because the photo will have more information and this allows us more options for a quality restoration. So please scan all photos in COLOUR.

4. Determine the best scan resolution to assure the quality and usefulness of your digital photos. The optimal resolution depends on how the image will be printed, saved, or displayed. A good rule of thumb is to scan your photos at a minimum of 300dpi (Dots Per Inch) to assure decent quality for enhancement and restoration, but 600dpi or greater is better if you plan to enlarge smaller images.

5. Carefully position your photo face down on the scanner glass. Place your photo in the center of the glass, not near the edges. Make sure it is as straight as possible, then press "preview." The scanner will take a quick pass of the image and display a rough version on your screen. Check to see that it's straight, that no part of the photo has been cut off, and that the photo appears free of dust and lint. You can preview it again if needed.

6. Crop the previewed image to include only the original photo without the white border. If you include the white border in the scan, your scanning software might try to compensate for this white area by making the rest of the image too dark.

7. Scan the original image. Once you scan the photo, you can save it in a variety of formats. Scanning for restoration purposes requires a TIFF or JPEG format. We can handle most other formats, too, but TIFF is best because it is a "lossless" format where no data are lost from the original image.

Now that you've got your photo scanned in, it's time to save it to your hard drive.

8. Choose your file type. The best file type for scanning and saving archival photos is TIFF, the undisputed leader when the best quality is required. The popular JPG (JPEG) file format is nice because its compression algorithm creates smaller file sizes—making it the most popular photo format for web pages and file sharing, but the compression which creates the small files also causes some quality loss. This loss of image quality is small, but can become important when dealing with digital images that will be restored.

9. Name the file. It is important that you name the files in a way that lets you, and I, know which images you have sent to me, and what you want done to them. Save them to a folder either on your desktop, or within your “documents” folder.

10. Now you are ready to email the photo to us as an attachment, our email address is:

info@photocreative.co.nz

More tips:

Crop:
Always crop your pictures before you do the final scan. After the quick preview shows up on your screen, crop the image by drawing a box around the area you want scanned. Never scan the white background along with the photo because the scanner's automatic brightness and contrast adjustment will think the white background is part of the picture and will adjust the image quality badly, the image will be much bigger than it has to be which makes the resulting file unwieldy, and the scan will take a lot longer.

Originals:
Never do anything to the original scans except for naming them. Save them exactly the way they were scanned, without any changes.

Choosing The Document Type:
Most scanning software allows one to choose the type of image to be scanned; photo, slide, document, etc. Correctly setting this option will insure the best scan possible.

Common Terms:

Resolution:
In scanning, resolution refers to the number of dots per inch (DPI) that your scanner produces when “looking” at your photos. The higher the resolution, the more dots per inch your scanner uses to reproduce your picture. A low-resolution image will have less detail, and a high-resolution image will be more distinct. When scanning photos for restoration purposes, high resolutions are necessary. Set your resolution to 300 DPI or higher. If your original photo is very small and you want it enlarged, you may want to go up to 600 DPI or higher.

Pixels:
One way in which digital images differ from photographic ones is that they are made up of pixels; squares assigned specific colors. Photographs are continuous-tone images made up of an infinite gradation of tones. Digital photographs are simplified translations made up of a fixed number of colors appearing as a fixed number of squares or pixels. These pixels are arranged in a grid. The pixel is the smallest indivisible unit of a digital image.

JPEGs:
Also called JPGs, and pronounced "jay-pegs," are images that have been stripped of some of their detail in order to make smaller files. They're fine for most purposes but are not as good as TIFFs for restoration work. Try to save your scanned images as TIFFs.

Feel free to contact us if you would like more information.