Photo Restoration Home

I do photographic restoration and enhancement, among other work. We are located in Lubbock, Texas, and a branch of Earth and Air Photography, but we particularly enjoy doing photo restoration.

It’s important to know what that means. Photographic restoration is removing the ravages of time. It does not mean that the photograph is any better than original, or larger. Photographic restoration is making the photo exactly as it was when it was first made.

Everything else is enhancement. Enhancement includes, but is not limited to making the photograph sharper, or more in focus than was originally the case. It can also include limited or no loss enlargement so that the photos can be better viewed or printed in a larger format. Sometimes it includes simply adjusting the brightness and contrast or other basic settings such as saturation. It can also include colorization.

Another point about restoration and enhancement is that it is always a matter of degrees. Just how far do you want to go to get the perfect photo? For example, there are major dust and scratches on many old photos, and minor ones. Every single one can be removed, but it can take a lot longer to do that. Yes, there is software that can do much of that work, which we rarely use because it can also blur the photo somewhat. Just about all the time, we go to the trouble of removing dust and scratches one at a time by hand in order to avoid blurring the photo. Another example is that it is not too hard to focus in on a face, or certain parts of the photo, but getting everything in the photo in perfect focus can take a great deal of time and a lot of artwork.

There are a number of websites that will indicate a very low price for restoration. This of course is a hook to draw you in. Sure, there are times when we can charge that much for restoration, but it is usually photos that don’t need all that much work. It’s not difficult to correct some color, clarify the image and do a little facial sharpening. But badly damaged photos will certainly cost more, depending on the amount of damage and the work required.