Photo restoration

Photo restoration Photo-editing, re-colouring, restoring torn and faded photos, art and illustrations. Clients are usually delighted with the results

I have been professionally restoring precious personal and heritage photos for over 20 years at reasonable prices.

Can you do a good color restoration using AI? Yes and No. Below is a photo I was asked to restore (Top) and colour (Belo...
23/10/2025

Can you do a good color restoration using AI? Yes and No. Below is a photo I was asked to restore (Top) and colour (Below). In the comments section I will give details about when AI worked and when it didn't.

25/09/2025

High quality photo restorations by Briars Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Briar will take on almost anything!

This flowergirl had faded with time. She was also  off-colour on the day! and was looking rather wan. The girl in the ph...
19/09/2025

This flowergirl had faded with time. She was also off-colour on the day! and was looking rather wan. The girl in the photo is now in her late fifties and thinks the colours in the dresses are awful: lilac and peach - but I had to faithfully reproduce them. I think she fired the restored photo into a back drawer somewhere.

TINY ENGRAVING ON A PLATE BECOMES A LOGO ON A BOOK COVER. An author wanted his family crest on the cover of a family gen...
19/09/2025

TINY ENGRAVING ON A PLATE BECOMES A LOGO ON A BOOK COVER. An author wanted his family crest on the cover of a family genealogy but he had no good photos of it - only a very small engraving on a silver plate. So he sent me a bad photo of the plate from which I extracted and worked on the crest. Good enough for the front cover of his book. Photo restoration of a kind...

BEFORE AND AFTER: The emulsion was literally flaking and falling off this faded old photo leaving thousands of tiny line...
18/09/2025

BEFORE AND AFTER: The emulsion was literally flaking and falling off this faded old photo leaving thousands of tiny lines that had to be removed and large holes to fill in. Features had faded away and needed to be defined again at pixel-level and parts of the photo had to be completely reconstructed. This was for a print not for digital display. It emerged looking slightly painterly but with likenesses well preserved. The client wanted it in grayscale.

The photo of this little guy fell into a fire and was badly singed. The client who brought it to me was elderly and deep...
26/08/2025

The photo of this little guy fell into a fire and was badly singed. The client who brought it to me was elderly and deeply attached to the photo. He was the small boy in the photo.

The signatures on this photo had faded so badly they could only be retrieved by trying to follow (at high magnification)...
26/08/2025

The signatures on this photo had faded so badly they could only be retrieved by trying to follow (at high magnification) the impression pressed into the photo by ballpoint pens. The client had served in NATO in Europe and his mates had signed the photo . He wanted the signatures back. We managed to retrieve nine of them but the other 2 defied rescue. His knowledge of engineering slang helped!

Before and After: Taken in apartheid era South Africa. The client wanted it restored for her mother - the girl at the fr...
22/08/2025

Before and After: Taken in apartheid era South Africa. The client wanted it restored for her mother - the girl at the front of the cart.. The client's father owned a plantation. He was good to his black employees and made a cart all the children on the estate could play in. The original photo was in awful condition literally flaking in my hands and disfiguring faces. The client was happy to accept a black and white rather than spend more money and time getting me to colour it. She was delighted with the end result.

This hotrod photo was being restored for a client who wanted it to be a surprise Christmas gift for her husband. The col...
22/08/2025

This hotrod photo was being restored for a client who wanted it to be a surprise Christmas gift for her husband. The colours took some pinning because - though the man no longer had the car he knew it intimately and I couldn't get them wrong. Other photos didn't help - the colours weren't true. Nor could I consult him. In the end he couldn't fault the job.

Before and After: This old painting was found in an estate cleanup and thought to be from the early 1860s - obviously be...
21/08/2025

Before and After: This old painting was found in an estate cleanup and thought to be from the early 1860s - obviously before the time of hand-painted colour photographs. An interesting new family heirloom!

You never know what a client is going to ask for!  In a tribute to her newly deceased husband this client wanted to dres...
21/08/2025

You never know what a client is going to ask for! In a tribute to her newly deceased husband this client wanted to dress him in her graduation gown because he had been so instrumental in helping her graduate. Then she wanted other accoutrements showing his status and education. The final photo looks rather different from the original but it IS the same man.

An elderly man wanted this WWII photo of his father restored for framing. A lot of flecking had to be removed and there ...
21/08/2025

An elderly man wanted this WWII photo of his father restored for framing. A lot of flecking had to be removed and there was some recreating of the jacket and the right side of his face

Address

Redvers Drive, Belmont Hills
Lower Hutt
5010

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5:30am
Tuesday 9am - 5:30am
Wednesday 9am - 5:30am
Thursday 9am - 5:30am
Friday 9am - 5:30am
Saturday 9am - 12pm

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