Photolearner01

Hello Gentle People:
Has any of you used a Print Duplication service that does a quality job of duplicating a historical photo?

Please do recommend if you had good results.

Many 🙏🏽
Photolearner01

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

How large a photo are you trying to produce?

Our Historical Society made some posters using historical photos from around town. They just used a local facility that produces engineering drawings and displays for presentations. A few years later our Planning Board got a large printer that would do displays up to 48" wide (not sure of the exact width but it was fairly wide). They were used for posters of events for the town and presentations at Town Meeting.

If your town does not have a large printer for such displays, they may be willing to let you know where they get things like that done. Also, businesses that rely on presentations for bids either have large printers or farm those things out and may be able to direct you to a good supplier.

Also, you may have to show that you have the right to reproduce a photo. If it's historical, it probably means you didn't take the shot. But copyrights can be extended for quite a while.

Photolearner01

Thanks for your help. The photo in question is a family photograph so copyright is not an issue. It is somewhat smaller than an 8 x 10.
Thanks
Photolearner01

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I'm glad to hear that you have at least one important family historical photo. IMHO, family photos are important. And also the documentation that goes with a family photo is important. Both the photo and the documentation are worth preserving.

My family had a few photos that date back to the 1800s. Most of them came with writing on the back with a few details. Some came with minimal details. Some were completely unannotated. My wife's family had a boxful of photos. About half of them had no annotation and nobody knew who they were.

As time goes on, some of our family historical photos get more removed from the current family. I think it's important to preserve the history by placing annotation on the photos. With the advent of digital, this gets tricky. These days, probably most photos are viewed from a digital source. Albums of photos are so last millennium. With that shift, the writing on the back of the photos has disappeared. So you need an alternative way to document your family history.

There are ways to do this, but they are not all consistent with artistry. Digital photos have metadata, which can include text describing who, what, why, when, where. But not everyone knows that metadata exists, let alone how to view it. The only really safe way to document a photo is to include the documentation in the image. This of course impacts the artistry of the photo, but no matter how you copy the photo the documentation will be on the image (unless it is cropped off).

So you need two photos. One will be the original photo, in all its artistic glory. The other will be the original photo with the names of the participants added to the image in such a way as to identify them. Additional documentation can be added in the margin of the image. They should go together, and since one of the major ways of preserving a family photo is to distribute it to all the family, both version should be sent.

I have a description of some ways to document photos. There are several different processes available, described on UHH user pages starting with Adding Documentation to Family Photos. Take a look.

PS: It sounds like you have a paper copy of the photo. You need a digital copy to add the annotation that I have described. A good scanner will be able to do that. Most copy facilities will have the ability to scan an existing photo and produce a digital copy. The skills needed to add the annotation can probably be found in a local photo club if you don't have the digital skills yourself. But if you take this on as a long term project (including other family photos) you can develop the skills to do this. One thing to consider is that you should pick recent photos as well as historical photos. Those recent photos will be historical in another hundred years or so.