William Daniel or “Bill” joined the Royal Navy and like so many others, their families are now in possession of one of these portraits. This colourisation was made from a scan of a reasonably small photo. So some work was required to sharpen and restore the image before the colour work could start.
Colours were easy to match, examples of uniform can be found all over google images. Six tones were used on the face. In all a two hour job.
My first colourisation of a black and white photo was an image of my Great Grandmother Elda Atyeo. Born in 1898 and died in 1981 so I never got to meet her. My family are not short on stories about her though.
The process took a couple of hours, the photo was in great condition and required no repair. I used multiple layers with a range of blend modes to achieve the colour.
For the past 10 years I have been working on my family tree using popular Genealogy website Ancestry. This gives you the ability to share with family members… who in turn began to offer up information. In time I became the one who looks after the family photos. It wasn’t long before albums, carrier bags, suitcases and biscuit tins of photos started to appear. It’s my job… no… duty to make sure these are not lost. So I began scanning, cataloging and storing them on hard drives, DVDs and now in the cloud.
Whilst scanning an occasional gem of a photo would appear, sometimes a little worn, other times nearly beyond repair. Luckily I have spent over 15 years working as a photographer and obviously not without the latest version of Photoshop. I decided to tidy a couple of photos up, repair what I could. That lead to attempting to manually colour some of the photos. I added them to my social media accounts and the feedback was amazing! In fact, I had other people digging out their family photos for me to work my magic on.
The Photo Restoration Co. has arrived!
