fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

I scanned a very, very old photo of my childhood home with an Epson V 500. How can I best restore this photo so I can have it framed and presented to my sister as a gift? Is there a place I can mail the original photo for professional digitizing and printing or is my Epson about as good as I'll do?

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ghbowser Loc: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

How is this edit?

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Don, the 2nd son Loc: Crowded Florida

This looks quite good to me but, for reprinting it likely will need some tweaking to get the best result. Typically scanned images include dust n debris which can take time and effort to remove.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Use a different forum to post this...

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

Certainly an improvement. Thanks! What program did you use to make the edits?

ghbowser Loc: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

Photoshop elements and topaz Photo AI

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Try posting it to the Post Processing section first. It needs fixing, which is more than any printer can do. Chances are that when it's sorted your own printer will be adequate.

If you decide to do that, post as large a file as you can for them to work on.

bobbyjohn Loc: Dallas, TX

Several months ago, we used "Memory Cherish," a professional restoration company on a 38-year-old 16x20" picture hanging in our house, a picture which was greatly faded from the years. Example below.

I just now looked at the website, and the current price for a professional restoration is $38. Then if you also want a print of that, will cost extra depending on the size you want. Dunno if such a cost is beyond what you are willing to pay. Alternatively, you can take the final product, a high-res .jpg, to whatever printing company (or home printer) you choose.

https://memorycherish.com/

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Hip Coyote

Interesting coincidence. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal had an article on various apps, programs and services that restore photos. Here is the link:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/bring-old-photos-of-mom-to-life-with-these-apps-5bc8fc12

If it was only one photo, I'd just pay someone else to do it, but if there are more, perhaps some of the services mentioned may be of benefit to you.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Add contrast and sharpening in the processing. Level the image / building. Crop away the excess from the edges of the scan. And, of course, digitally repair the tear.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

Bummer. Clicked on the link and it says you can read it after you log in to your subscription.

Hip Coyote

Let me see if I can grab some links out of the article. Some are subscription based but one seems to have an $8 a month that can be cancelled. In the article, Firefly did an amazing job of restoring a photo that was badly damaged restoring torn off parts of a photo depicting a person.

https://photomyne.com/

https://www.myheritage.com/

https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly.html

srg

I am so happy that UHH has a section policeman.
When I see a topic posted in the wrong section it upsets me so much I can't sleep for a week and I wind up kicking the dog, forgetting to let the cat in and contemplating suicide. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Hip Coyote

In the absence of a legitimate forum moderator, who has the authority and ability to move posts to the appropriate sections, freeze certain posts, and warn people about inappropriate behavior, this kind of thing happens.

Unfortunately, this main section is really the wild west of the forum. There is no significant moderation taking place. A good example is a discussion on ISO that has nearly 500 posts. There’s no reason for that. That is a scientific matter that clearly the camera manufactures fully understand and I am sure there is a scientific explanation as to what it exactly is. The same thing can go on and on with raw versus JPEG and some other topics.

What needs to happen is for admin to seek some legitimate and knowledgeable users of this forum, and have them moderate this main section. It also needs to have a section that discusses the topics that ultimately few people have scientific knowledge of who love to argue about. There can be significant discussions and disagreements , but when someone goes off the rails and starts insulting people that person needs to be warned and then removed from the forum.

The value of this forum, for me, is greatly diminished by the lack of moderation. Another example is that there is a travel section, yet, travel is allowed in this section. So there’s really no consistency across the site as to what goes where.

I belong to a financial site, Bogleheads, which has very strict, decor rules, and has a lengthy section that they call the wiki. The wiki is for those topics, which are not really debatable, or that are well established. The site is an exceptional site in that it gives very very good input from many people across the world. One of the reasons it is a good site is that it is moderated by some very smart people who will shut down this kind of behavior quickly. They will also shut down a post that essentially becomes a back-and-forth about some sort of topic and nothing newly informative is being discussed.

So we take this site for what it is: and that is the wild west of amateur photography.

Grumpyone Loc: Pascoag,Rhode Island

you might want to try Old School Photolab in Dover NH, about a hour from you.
https://photosmithimaging.com/services/restorations