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TOM NORTHLAND
TOM’S HOMEPAGE
Tom Northland
Old Photos
Scanning
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Scanning of old photos
Scanning of old pictures may not be as easy as it seems. There are a lot of pitfalls, and some reasons are quite clear for they who have a photographic background with the use of chemicals, film and paper. We return to that.
A flatbed scanner of some quality is what we need, and mostly gives the best results.
Some printer and scanner combos has a very simple scanner system that may give some
lesser results.
Don't ever use automatic feed, as some old photos are so bristle that
you may get a destroyed original picture. If the picture is very curly you may break
the emulsion by flattening it. Do not try to flatten them with a heated iron as you
may do with other papers. We return to what to do.
Do always scan in at a higher resolution
than needed as this makes minute changes easier to do. Do not use black and white
mode even when the original is of that type.
You need a god graphic editor containing useable filters for your work, and you can find that for free. Count on some training to use the necessary tools for good results. Some editors do have automatic tools for restoring old pictures, and some work well and others do not cope with really old photos.
This is written for you by a professional photographer.
The Photo-
How was this picture(s) made for publishing here?
Read on…
One thing is the publishing or printing, another is the scanning and photographic work done on your PC.
Just scanning in an old paper picture may not give the wanted result. Why?
1. Different scanners have different ability to reproduce the paper picture in detail
2. The paper picture may have changed with time and less than perfect storage
3. The picture and scanner surface may not be clean and dust free
4. The scanning software may be too crude for that kind of work
5. You may be led to think that a black and white picture is just black and white
6. The photographic picture may not be even or flat for the scanning to be sharp
7. Chemical aging may have given alterations to surface and even coloring
8. Some changes are due to errors at the production time, bad chemicals or paper
9. Paper or the emulsion surface may have been changed by damp, fungus or bacteria
10.
Cracks in the picture surface, or cracks in the paper backing
How did I do it?
Old pictures (Link)
This original paper picture was so old and tarnished that most of the details was impossible to see even in very bright light.
An other scan has not been included here yet to demonstrate, but the rope was impossible to see and most details in the clothing was totally missing. White points in the picture from dust on the original film, and from dust in the scanner was a problem that was amplified in the scanner.
A cleaning job on the scanner helped, but I let the picture surface alone. As a professional photographer I may have given the picture a chemical bath to clean it up, but as chemicals may give unwanted results on unknown paper, and I got only one picture, I opted for leaving it alone. This had to lead to much more work after the scanning, but this is nondestructive. Do not erase the scanned file. Work on a copy so you can revert to the original scanned result in colors.
This is a tiny version of the result with the rope and nice west not shown as black surfaces only.
All old paper photos have some kind of diversion from clean black and white of different reasons, or a combination of reasons mentioned above.
Age is a common reason, but all from type of paper, chemicals used and toning as sepia toning or warm copper may have changed the picture. So I have found that this fact may carry more information than what meets the naked eye.
Not all old pictures are made on a silver-
You may find pictures with a metallic-
White spots may have been copied into the paper from a dirty original film, and can’t be removed by any chemical method. Removal can be done after scanning.
Some pictures may have been maltreated from the start of, and may have been developed in too old developer solution, or too little or too much fix.
This may be a case for a pro who knows what can be done chemically with an old paper photo without destroying it.
Most silver based pictures can be re-
But do scan it in before you even think about any chemical treatment by anyone. You
may also think about photographic reproduction by a specialist, with the right equipment
to do it, as a professional repro-
Pictures with cracks in the emulsion, curled after a damp storage or otherwise, can
be restored by very gently submerging in completely clean water with a ”wet-
After an evaluation, I did the scanning of the above photo in full colors and high
resolution.
This color scan was a very big file with all the information this scanner
was able to get from the photo. High resolution and 48 bit color as a minimum.
What
you don't get into the file is lost and you can't work with it.
When the work is done
you can reduce and compress to a new file. Keep the scanner file as is with no compression.
(A zero compressing format.)
Then I color separated the file in CMYC and found additional details information in the yellow layer. The reason is that much of the original picture turns yellow, and often a yellowish deposit that together makes some of the details very dark. I transferred the layers with specific information to a B&W layer and added this to black and white planes, what was flattened to one plane, and in the end given a warm sepia tone.
I have to mention that I worked long hours with all tools available to get rid of white spots of all kinds, unwanted lines and other faults of different origin.
The results was amazing!