The difficult job of the photo restorer: this is how a 90-year-old photograph is restored step by step

In a time when everything is digital, it is a surprise to find a video in which they restore a photograph by hand to save it from the passage of time. The image in question does not seem to have any artistic value, but the passage of time has given it a historical value for the community in which it appeared.

Today, the most common thing is to scan an old photograph and pass all that information through the filters and adobe photoshop tools until the effect of the years is not noticeable. But what we have found is a video in which they restore the paper and the sensitive surface of an image that is more than 90 years old.

For those of us who have spent years in this world, it is a reunion with the techniques that we used in the darkroom; and for the youngest, it is a wake-up call about the origins of photography and the immense pleasure of touching a paper photograph.

How to Physically Restore an Old Photograph

If you are over 40 years old, surely if you were fond of photography, you had the opportunity to work in a laboratory or see it in a cultural center. Maybe even at school they had one. It’s great to work with the computer, but in the dark room, with its red light and the music we put on, it was all different, a much more artisan job.

The process that is observed in the video impresses by the number of steps that follow to reach the final result. Since humidifying machines to be able to iron the paper even sponges with various chemicals to remove dirt, going through the recovery of lost areas with Japanese paper.

A digitized image can be reproduced indefinitely, but the original copy has a unique value. It is the paper that those who appear portrayed saw. Time has passed by her and that is why we are more excited when we see her exposed than a current copy of her.

Torn paper is restored with Japanese paper

If you have time, if you are on vacation, we recommend taking ten minutes of your time to watch the video. It is a song to things well done. Here it doesn’t matter impossible development techniques, or the millions of layers that we use. Nor is it a spectacular photograph. It is almost a simple social overview that at the time would not have much relevance.

do it yourself at home

It is not easy to do all this at home. You have to have studies and a lot of practice to achieve something similar. And of course all the machinery. I would never dare to do it personally with such an old photograph. For this reason we feel safer in a digital environment.

The feeling is not the same, but at least it is more permissive with the mistakes we can make. Now there are plenty of ways to do it, from Photoshop to various apps that do it for you.

Today I would recommend scanning the image with the best possible scanner (the difference is noticeable) and transferring the photograph to Adobe Photoshop. It is true that we can use AI of the new apps, but few support a large size and a TIFF format. If you do not need large sizes, they are the best option.

The digital restoration process in Adobe Photoshop it is slow and heavy. With experience great results are achieved. But no one takes several hours of work away from us. A good combination would be to take advantage of the program’s neural filters and then continue working by hand. The only problem with this process would be how to scan a rolled photograph.

And it also serves to realize that photography is not a competition. The important thing is to master the technique so that future generations can enjoy the moment you captured. Photography is a social act, a way of remembering the past.

It is true that the video is in English, but you can activate the subtitles in Spanish to understand, step by step, everything we see. It’s as relaxing as a frame restoration video and as instructive as one in the Prado Museum. Surely you feel like looking for your old photos and doing the same.