Consumer Photo Restoration

Photo Repair and Restoration

Digital Restoration

Digital Restoration is a complex process involving analog and digital integration to arrive at a refined, finished and archival product.

Black & white and color film is composed of layers of organic matter floating on a piece of acetate. As such, they are subject to the deterioration caused by air, moisture, and artificial or natural light. The early Ektachrome color films – used from the 1940s up through the mid-1960s – were extremely unstable, an element that adds extra problems to the already complex restoration process.

The Restoration process begins with scanning the original at a very high-resolution. Once you have the scan, the process turns digital. Using top of the line Apple computers and Adobe Photoshop software, the digital image is manipulated by restoration professionals using the tools available to repair, enhance, rebuild and ultimately breathe life back into photographs that would otherwise be beyond restoration. The process takes hours but once completed, the reproduction possibilities become endless.

The Archives creates prints using Hewlett Packard's newest Designjet printers and UV inks printed on Hahnemühle media. The resulting images are projected to have a life span of over 200 years.

Photo Repair Step by Step

Archivally Clean Original Print, Negative, Transparency

Scan the Original at 4000 - 8000 dpi on professional grade film scanners.

Restore the digitized image using Dual Processing Apple Computers with Adobe Photoshop and specialized extensions. (This requires to many involved steps to list here...)

Output the restored image to an archival media solution. (Such as the HP Solution exclusive to The Archives, with an unheard of 200 year print lifespan.)

Restoration and The Archives

The Archives is dedicated to preserving, restoring and presenting timeless works of photography. Our company began its work digitizing the original negatives and transparencies from the works of Milton H. Greene in an attempt to save and restore them.

Joshua Greene, Milton's eldest son, and his father attempted to restore many of the images through pre-digital restoration processes. These archaic methods proved inadequate, and in 1985 Milton Greene died believing the majority of his collection was lost forever...

Over the last nine years, Joshua, has committed himself to salvaging great photographic images from his father’s and other archival collections before they are lost to time.

The Archives partnered with HP in 1999 and began beta-testing Hewlett Packard's newest Designjet printers and UV inks printing on Hahnemühle media. The resulting images are projected to have a life span of over 200 years.

Carrying this successful collaboration another step, Hewlett Packard and The Archives partnered to produce the first world tour exhibition of the newly restored works of Milton H. Greene in June 2001.

The exhibit is entitled, "Portraits of an Era," and unveils 28 images of various well-known personalities plus 33 images of Marilyn Monroe.

Click here to see low resolution examples of our work

Click here to see what others have said about our work