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Enhancements, Sizing, Framing

Every order is unique, here are tips to help describe yours.











Options Explained


Basic color restoration and red-eye removal is included, as is cropping to enhance the primary subject and to achieve your desired dimensions. Both studio-wrap and framed versions include stretching and a hand-brushed lacquer finish - both are ready for hanging.

Besides the best quality you can get anywhere, we are the only workshop where your finished canvas is hand-lacquered. This is a time-consuming process, but it is the only method that results in a canvas with the glossy sheen of hand-painted oil. It is also provides much more effective protective coat for your canvas than a spray finish.

Size

The sizes presented are exact multiples of the original image, which makes it easy to select an enlargement of common photo sizes. But you can specify any size you want. If it is close to one of the listed sizes, just pick that size and then indicate your exact measurements in the comments box upon checkout.

If it is an unusual size, the Custom Size product gives you a different range of choices. Once again just pick the closest dimension and then enter your exact measurements in Comments.

Restoration Options

Restoration mostly refers to repairing tears, folds, marks and stains, but also used to indicate a badly faded photo, but which you can still make out what the colors want to be.

Standard Enhancement

 We will carefully and maybe significantly enhance the colors (realistically), remove read-eye, repair minor spots and perhaps some judicious cropping or blurring of superfluous border elements.

Do Not Make Changes!

 You want the color and everything about the image left exactly as it is.

Minor Repair

 If there are just one or two small but significant problem areas in the subject area of the photo, this will probably suffice. Even extensive problems with insignificant background areas can fall in this category if you would like us to blur, darken or crop out the background - this is often not only the cheapest but the best course of action.

Fix Several Problems

 A few problems in the subject area, each requiring close attention, but each fairly limited to a particular area of detail.  Or a lot of areas of the background which need to be fixed but don't need real detail.

Major Repairs

 This involves carefully rebuilding portions of the primary subject area such as repairing and repainting part of a face that has been significantly torn or creased.

Colorization Options

Although colorizing and restoration are two different techniques, if your image is not damaged, just severely faded, then colorizing is probably all you need. And if you can still see the colors fairly well, it's just a standard enhancement to bring them back all the way!

Colorization

 There are two types of photos that call for colorization. One is a monochrome (black and white or sepia) and one which the colors are so severely faded that it looks almost monochrome. There is usually a significant difference in the result however. Even a very badly faded color photo can usually be re-colored in a very realistic manner, although the colors may not be as saturated as the original. When a monochrome photo is colorized, it will have a somewhat artificial look. It will look much like old photos that were colorized before color film was invented.

Black and White

 This directs us to transform a color photo to black and white. This may be a preferable alternative to colorizing a badly faded photo of fairly recent vintage as black and white has a modern feel and there will be no introduction of artificiality. Black and white has a dramatic feel.

Sepia

 This our preference for an older photo, badly faded or black and white. Sepia gives a warmer and more historical feel than black and white in most cases.

"Painting," or Brushstrokes Options

Adding brushstrokes differs from restoration in that the aim is to change the essential appearance of an image rather than restore it to its original realistic fidelity.

Digital
Brushstrokes

There are as many techniques we employ to add a painterly feel to an image as there are styles of painting.

The techniques employed for any give image are those that the image suggests to us. In other words, we let nature of the image tell us what will work best. This is also a difficult technique to demonstrate as it is usually too subtle to be obvious at the size we can display in our online gallery.
What is obvious is that the image is more dramatic and rich in colors. By adding a painterly touch to an image, we gain more leeway to 'correct' the color balance and saturation.

Choosing Brushstrokes

 If you love your picture just as it is, brushstrokes are probably not a good choice. A photo-realistic image that looks great is unlikely to be improved by brushstrokes. However, if you kind of like the image, especially the primary subject, but just wish that the whole thing had more punch or that the surrounding areas were more colorful or dramatic, then brushstrokes can do the trick. Usually we do very little to faces when adding brushstrokes, except to punch up the color beyond what would work in a perfectly realistic enhancement operation.