CARBONO ACTIVO,

Figuring out exactly how I’ll repair a particular photo is, intellectually, by far the toughest part of the job. Making the corrections can take me a lot of time and work, anywhere from an hour to a day or more, but that part of it doesn’t strain my brain. Mapping out the strategy that will get me from A (lousy image) to Z (great photograph) is the tricky bit.

The very fi rst thing I do when I get a new restoration job is to play with it. I scan in a small version of the photograph. It can either be a low-resolution image or a high-resolution scan of a small portion of the entire photograph; often I do one of each. What I’m after is a small fi le size, so that I can get it into the computer and mess around with it quickly.

These fi rst scans give me the lay of the land, to fi gure out just what I have to work with and how far I might be able to take it. Many of the photographs I restore come to me as unintelligible (and sometimes nearly blank) pieces of paper, like Figure 1-7 . I simply can’t tell by looking at such photographs with

Fig. 1-7 Don’t assume that a photograph is unrecoverable until you’ve tried scanning it! A careful scan, using the procedures in Chapter 4 and some clever enhancement tricks (Chapter 5, pages 152–155) , can extract amazing amounts of detail from nearly blank photographs. In the online examples I present all the steps for a complete restoration of this photograph.

the naked eye how much photographic information is hidden in that tabula rasa, let alone how I might fi x it.

Even after years of experience, I am frequently surprised by what’s possible. I’ve learned not to tell clients whether I can give them a good restoration based on my visual examination of the photograph. Too often I’m wrong; I underestimate how much quality photographic data is buried in that seemingly hopeless piece of paper or fi lm and how much my hardware and software and skill can mine it.

Scanners excel at extracting the near-invisible. Using the guiding principles from Chapter 4, “ Getting the Photo into the Computer, ” I adjust the curves and levels in my scanner software to pull out and emphasize as much of the real photographic information as I can. Looking at that on my screen gives me a pretty good idea of the potential I have to work with.

Once I can see the photograph more clearly, I decide what its biggest and most obvious problems are. Some photographs have great tone and color but lots of physical damage. Others are physically near-perfect but badly stained or faded. Usually it’s a mix.

I don’t immediately dive into serious restoration. Even though my time is money when I’m working on a job, I very consciously don’t “ work ” with the photograph from the get-go. Instead I just play, trying out different tools and ideas, noodling around for 30 minutes or so, trying out different approaches to fi nd out what will most effectively fi x the photograph’s problems. Experience, of course, has given me a good sense of which treatments are likely to be the best remedy for which ills, but every photograph is different and has its little surprises. Hence, the play time.

I try very hard to not be too goal-directed. My objective is to fi gure out where I want to take this photograph by learning its potential and which of my tools and techniques have the most promise for bringing out that potential, not to drive myself in a pre-judged direction. I try different sharpening or blurring fi lters, experiment with different masking tools that I have, explore different color-manipulation plug-ins. When I fi nd something that feels like it might take me someplace interesting, I explore it further.

Exploration for the sake of exploration and the adventure of seeing where a photograph might take me: that’s the mindset I go into this with, because, paradoxically, treating this work as play makes me more productive by making me more creative. It’s valuable because it helps me plan my strategy and approach to that particular restoration.

Once I’ve settled on a course of action, I make a good scan of the photograph and save a copy of it. As I point out in Chapter 4, the kind of scan I make depends on the tools I want to use and the quality of the photograph. Looking at

the test scan on the screen, I can see how much fi ne detail there really is in the photograph and how it relates to the physical damage and defects that I’m going to want to eliminate.

If the photograph isn’t very sharp to begin with, I might go with a

low-resolution scan that yields me a smaller fi le that’s easier to work with. On the other hand, if I think I’m going to do a lot of fi ne-detail enhancement on the photograph, I scan at higher resolutions than I would if I only wanted to capture the visible detail in the photograph. If a photograph has lots of damage (such as cracks all over the surface) that has much fi ner detail than the actual photographic image does, I may choose to scan at very high resolutions. Then I can use spatial fi lters (see pages 218, 276) to pick out the cracks and crevices for repair without also selecting the true image detail ( Figure 1-8 ).

But don’t get the impression that I’m starting out blind each time I get a new photo to restore. Every restoration job, like every photograph, is unique, but it’s common for photographs of a similar nature to have similar problems. For example, if someone asks you to restore a mid-1960s color Polaroid print that’s been in an album, it’s likely that the photograph won’t be really badly faded, but the colors will be poorly saturated, with dull and veiled highlights.

Another commonality is that the farther you roll back the clock, the more likely it is that the photograph will be physically damaged. There’s certainly no shortage of recent photographs that have suffered trauma, and occasionally very old photographs are remarkably well cared for, but the trend is undeniable. Water and mildew damage, even parts of the photograph eaten away by vermin, show up more and more frequently as you go farther into the past.

Fig. 1-8 This small photograph is a good candidate for a high-resolution scan, even though the picture isn’t very sharp. A scan like that will make it easier to selectively repair the cracks and creases, as demonstrated in Chapter 8.