Digital photograph restoration

Before and after composite on a restoration of a 1911 portrait of baseball player Ed Walsh.

Digital photograph restoration is the practice of restoring the appearance of a digital copy of a physical photograph which has been damaged by natural, man made, or environmental causes or simply affected by age or neglect.

Digital photograph restoration uses a variety of image editing techniques to remove visible damage and aging effects from digital copies of physical photographs. Raster graphics editors (see list below) are typically used to repair the appearance of the digital images and add to the digital copy of the photo where pieces of the physical photograph are torn or missing. Evidence of dirt, scratches, and other signs of photographic age are removed from the digital image manually, by painting over them meticulously. Unwanted color casts are removed and the image's contrast or sharpening may be altered in an attempt to restore some of the contrast range or detail that is believed to be in the original physical image. In addition image processing techniques such as image enhancement and image restoration are also applicable for the purpose of digital photograph restoration.

See also

• Infrared cleaning
• Media preservation
• Photograph preservation
• SilverFast scanner software

Example of the digital image restoration of a severely water and mildew damaged 5x7 inch glass photographic plate of the Golden Gate in San Francisco, California, taken about 1895 from "Land's End" in Lincoln Park on the Northwest tip of the San Francisco Peninsula.

An example of digital image reconstruction and restoration of the image "Doi călușari "

Digital construction and restoration of a badly damaged photograph from Costică Acsinte Archive

External links

• Media related to Restoration of photographs at Wikimedia Commons