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Why come to Portraits by Hart?

We are celebrating 64 years in business

Vintage Photographs & Restorations of Old Photos

Your vintage photographs & old photos can be repaired & restored for future generations to enjoy.

Here you will find more examples of vintage photographs & old photos we have restored for customers who have traveled to us from all over The West Midlands, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Birmingham & The UK. 

A colorized photograph from a vintage black & white original photo. Wolverhampton Wanders football group.

 

The vintage photograph above of a Wolverhampton Wanders football group was originally taken in black & white & we have digitally colorized it.  In the old days before the wonders of digital manipulation it was still possible to add colour to a black & white photo. In those days however, all of the hand colouring work had to be completed on an actual black & white photograph. These days we do all the colouring digitally. So long as you have an idea of what the original colours may have been then we can turn any old black & white photos into colour.

A digitally hand coloured photograph of a lady head & shoulders.
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The vintage old photo of a lady head & shoulders seen above was originally created in black & white. When this original photograph was bought into our studio by the customer, it wasn’t in perfect condition. It did require some minor restoration work before we could get started with colorizing. We always carry out any photograph restoration work prior to hand colouring. Once restored we then applied the colours which had been suggested by the client. In some cases some colours in a photograph may not be known. In cases like this we would often suggest colours which would be suitable for a picture of the period. Colours for eyes, hair & general complexion are usually known by the customer.

A faded old vintage photograph restored & saved for future generations.
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Vintage photographs like the one shown above can often appear to be unrecoverable. Sometimes an image can look to be so faint that no amount of image manipulation could gain anything from it. This is one area of photograph restoration where the digital age has really made it’s mark.

 

At Portraits by Hart have been restoring old photos for over forty years. In the old days before the advent of digital technology we carried out restoration work on an actual copy of the original old photo with a real airbrush & bristle brushes with dyes & paint. The final restored photograph would ten be photographed & a final photograph would be printed. We could still achieve a good result in the old days. However with faded photographs we were very limited in what we could achieve. We could improve contrast slightly & print the image darker but that was pretty much all we could do.

 

These days we can work marvels on old faded photos. The latest digital tools we have available to us today enable us to perform tasks we couldn’t even dream of in years gone by. The result we achieved on the image above would simply have been impossible without digital technology.

A badly faded antique photograph of a group of ladies digitally restored.
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The antique photograph above is another good example of a badly faded image. On the original picture there is almost no detail at all in the faces & yet through digital manipulation & by using computer software such as Photoshop we can breath life back into it. This photo was well over a hundred years old & it gives us great satisfaction to know we have saved it for more generations to enjoy.

A badly damaged, cracked & broken antique photograph restored.
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The antique photograph above came to us in over twenty separate pieces. Through the years this vintage photo had literally fallen apart. The damage is pretty obvious but this old photograph had other problems. It wasn’t badly faded but as can be seen in the lower part of the original photo above, there is a metallic sheen. This is caused by silver coming out of the image & this creates extra problems when the photograph is initially copied either with a camera or by scanning. Special polarized lighting & filters are required to eliminate this effect as much as possible.

 

Before we could even get started with copying this antique picture we had to piece it all together like a jigsaw puzzle first. Once photographed we were then able to get the image into the computer. After a few hours of digital retouching & editing we ended up with the image on the right. This is another great example of an historical photograph that looked to be destined for the dust bin. Yet once again we have managed to retrieve a it for future generations to enjoy.

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All photograph restorations are carried out in house. We never pass your treasured photographs  on to a third party to run the risk of loss or damage. We understand how precious your memories are and we treat your photographs as if they were our own.

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Here you will find a list of some photograph faults we can repair or restore.

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We can also scan & archive your family photograph collections & photo albums to a digital format so they can be treasured by generations to come. Your home video collections, cine films & audio tapes can also be converted and digitized, we offer an extensive digital conversion service. 

All photographic & video to digital transfer services we provide are carried out in house by ourselves. We will never pass your treasured negatives, transparencies, video tapes & cine films on to a third party.

Many businesses & High Street chains offering these services do not carry out the work themselves, they forward it on to a third party. We carry out all of the work ourselves. When you hand your items over to us you are very often handing them to the person who will actually carry out carry out the work.

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