Whether repairing damaged photographs, getting rid of unwanted parts of the picture, or resurrecting old photos of our immigrant ancestors, the restoration and retouching of old family photographs is a fun hobby, and a booming business.

Everyone in the world has grandparents, almost everyone has old photographs of their ancestors, and most people are curious about their heritage, even if descended from rogues (aren't we all to one degree or another).

To do the retouching and restoration of old photographs you just need two tools, a flatbed scanner and Adobe Photoshop software (plus the scanner software; LinoColor Elite and SilverFast are considered the two best).

Retouching old family photographs: start with a good flatbed scanner, then use Photoshop to restore old photos.

Heirloom photographs can best be handled by flatbed scanners. Indeed the ability to have a flatbed scanner in your own house, in your own office, is what has given rise to the explosive growth of retouching and restoring old photographs. My father is 91 years old and proud of the achievements of his ancestors as well as proud of himself having founded what is today the largest architectural company in the world, Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK Architects). Thus he commissioned the Digital Imaging Technology Center to prepare a family album for the rest of the family, many of whom did not know much about earlier generations. Since all FLAAR projects involve testing equipment in actual real everyday use (no antiseptic tests in our studios) we accepted this assignment so we could test hardware and software.

Andrea selected duotone, realizing this was the best way to reproduce old sepia prints. Most people probably send their old family album out to have it scanned elsewhere.

Since FLAAR has all the equipment in-house, we used a Lexmark Optra 1275n color laser printer. Even black-and-white pictures look better in color. Duotone photos of course almost require a color laser printer (though you can trick a monochrome laser printer to reproduce them by using colored toner and two passes through the machine, after switching out the toner cartridges).

Andrea was a good choice to do the scanning because this way we could test the user-friendliness of flatbed scanners. Andrea had never really used a scanner before, and had no training in digital imaging (she is a corporate lawyer when not selecting equipment at trade shows and then testing the hardware and software).

If you have an aged original photograph, you can do all kinds of things to it. We recommend you get your hands on any of the many books on Adobe Photoshop. We review several.

Restoration of old photographs is entertaining, and challenging. Most old photographs are faded, cracked, or stained. Many photos are torn or even missing their corners. Black blurs out details in shadow areas; white burns out highlights. Adobe Photoshop has all kinds of tools to fix all these defects in old heirloom photographs. But be sure to start with a good scan, and this implies a good flatbed scanner. I personally prefer to work with flatbed scanners starting at a minimum entry level of 1000 dpi and 1200 dpi is better. Naturally if you are at a professional graphics studio you will want 2000, 3000, or up to 4000 dpi that a flatbed scan offer. Better too much than too little, since I refuse to utilize interpolated dpi. I like real optical dpi. No lite pixels.

Above, the family home of the Fowler's. A son of this family later founded Southern Comfort, the liquor. The man and woman in the portraits above are either ancestors of the Fowlers or ancestors of George Hellmuth from Germany (near Spier).

If you have a cheap flatbed scanner then your image is degraded from the moment you begin to restore the old photographs. But if you have a quality flatbed scanner with professional software such as LinoColor Elite or the new SilverFast, then you have a head start. A Linotype-Hell Saphir Ultra2 is an excellent flatbed scanner to start with. It comes with LinoColor Elite software. In America this flatbed scanner is probably sold as the LinoColor, from LinoColor CPS. In Europe the company is Heidelberg CPS (Color Publishing Solutions). You have to order this scanner from good graphics supply company; they are not sold at discount stores.

If you are scanning old photographs commercially, at a professional level, then you might want to consider a more sophisticated scanner. Simply take your pictures to the nearest dealer who handles Fujifilm Electronic Imaging products and try out the Fuji C-550 Lanovia flatbed scanner. This flatbed can handle heirloom photos up to 47 x 35 cm in size. This scanner can also scan 3-dimensional objects, negatives, and transparencies. But don't try out the Lanovia unless you are serious and need the top of the high-end in quality

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