Kjell Moum, Photographer
Speciality - Restore old photos
Take care of your old photos
Which photos should you save? It is not a question of saving ”all or none”. Choose some photos that YOU think are important to save for the future, ex. the group photo from your grandparents’ wedding or your daughter’s old school photo. A photo is an instant in time, yet full of memories and emotions. You are likely to be making one of your most important investments.
When an old photo begins to lose its colour and fade or turn yellow it will eventually disappear for good
Photos fade in sunlight and turn yellow because of acids in the paper.
Old photos often have more details than our eyes can perceive. Since I digitize the photo in high resolution there is a good chance of saving most of the photo.
I will carefully digitize and restore not only your faded and yellowed photos but also the stained, scratched, folded or torn ones as well as slides and negatives
To help restore the photos I have a modern, digital and professional studio. All the equipment, from scanner and camera to screen and photoprinter, is calibrated and profiled to ensure optimal colours and an even greyscale.
I digitize the photo in a repro stand. To avoid unwanted reflexes from the photo I use polarization filters both in front of the photo lights and the lens. The size of the sensor in the camera is 50 Mpixel and digitizes the photo in high resolution.
The restoration can then in brief look like this: scratches, stains and creases are removed as well as other desired repairs. Contrast and brightness are adjusted. Noise (graininess) is reduced. See examples below the tab Examples.
You will receive the paper copies on age resistant paper and digital copies for the use on social media etc
I use acid free, Fine Art paper of the best quality from well known brands like Epson and Hahnemühle.
The photoprinter prints with pigment ink instead of liquid ink.
I work with the Rip program Image-Print to achieve optimal colour prints and neutral black and white prints.
The combination of acid free paper and pigment ink gives the print a lasting quality of up to 100 years for colour prints and up to 150 for black and white prints. This is before any signs of aging can be seen.
Chose between matte, semimatte, glossy paper or canvas to be mounted on a strecher frame.
The digital copies will be delivered as JPG-files.
Prepress
Is the photo to be used in a book or a magazine? I can take care of that! You will receive the photo with an embedded CMYK-profile in the Photoshop-PDF format, which can be used by the printing company without any adjustments.
This is how I give your restored photo a first-class quality and offer you security as a client of mine
- I digitize the photo in high resolution (50 Mpixel camera) to make all defects visible (scores, stains, fingerprints). This ensures that the photo can be effectively restored.
- The surface of the photo has been affected by aging and handling and is very rarely smooth. This contributes to reflexes from the studio lights to be clearly visible. To avoid these unwanted reflexes I use polarization filters in front of the photo lights and the lens.
- All equipment, from the photo scanner and camera to the screen and photo printer are calibrated and profiled to ensure optimal colours and an even grayscale.
- All prints are made with pigment ink and acid free, Fine Art paper. This is State-of-the-Art in printing technology. The photo thereby gets a lasting quality of up to 100 -150 years before signs of aging can be seen.
- Your restored digitized photo will be saved in my photo archive for at least five years. Reorders of prints, ex. in a different size, can be done during this period, as well as modifications of the restored digitized photo.
