Old Photo Scanning

OLD PHOTO SCANNING

Scan old photos & keep memories safe

Professional old photo scanning & digitising services

We hold the utmost respect for each photo entrusted to us

At Yesterday’s Photo ®, we understand the significance of your cherished memories and the value they hold. With utmost care and respect, we offer a range of exceptional services to transform your original photos into digitised treasures. From preserving your family heirlooms to ensuring the longevity of important documents, our team is dedicated to delivering superior quality and meticulous attention to detail. Join us as we embark on a journey to preserve your past, today and for generations to come.

Uniting Passion for Photography with Advanced Scanning Technology

At Yesterdays Photo®, our love for photography runs deep, and we wholeheartedly embrace this art form in our advanced scanning techniques. We believe that preserving your cherished memories goes beyond mere technicalities. It requires a genuine appreciation for the artistry and emotions captured within each photograph but most of all empathy for your history.

Re-capturing Old Moments with Care and High-End Scanning Gear

When it comes to scanning and digitising your photos, we merge our passion for photography with cutting-edge techniques and gear. Our team understands the intricate nuances of composition, lighting, and storytelling that make a photograph truly special. By combining our expertise in scanning technology with our artistic sensibilities, we ensure that your memories are not only preserved but also enhanced in their digital form.

Several aspects, like as using the right tools, taking careful precautions beforehand, and employing efficient scanning procedures, contribute to ensuring the highest quality in the photo restoration process.

Using state-of-the-art scanning equipment, we meticulously capture every detail, color tone, and texture of your photographs. We understand that each image carries its own unique story, and our goal is to bring that story to life in the digital realm. Our dedication to the craft of photography enables us to deliver stunning results that reflect the original beauty and sentiment of your precious memories.

Our legacy is Preserving yours!

Whether it’s a small collection of family portraits or large format photos, banners, or murals, we approach each project with the utmost care and enthusiasm. We believe that by infusing our love for photography into every step of the scanning process, we can create digitised versions that truly resonate with you and evoke the same emotions as the original prints.

At Yesterdays Photo®, we are not just scanning and digitising photos; we are preserving your legacy and immortalising the artistry captured within each image. Join us on this journey as we combine our passion for photography with advanced scanning techniques, ensuring that your memories remain vivid and cherished for generations to come.

On-Location Scanning Solutions: Let Yesterday's Photo® Come to You!

We serve the greater Perth metropolitan area and its suburbs with our mobile scanning service. However, we are prepared to travel anywhere in Australia if necessary to complete larger assignments and take a huge number of images.

We also put at your service our high-end photography equipment necessary to scan and digitise large size pictures, banners, and murals. For the best possible colour reproduction, we employ lights and strobes with a high CRI (Colour Rendering Index) in our scanning setup.

Here at Yesterdays Photo®, we promise to restore your photos to their former glory while paying close attention to every last detail and retaining the emotional impact of the originals.

Do you want to scan your old photos at home?

A quality photo restoration usually comes from a good scan

It is possible to restore photographs from a regular home scanner input or even your phone camera if the conditions are right, but a scanner with a resolution of 600 dpi or greater is highly recommended. This enhanced resolution captures more fine-grained information, facilitating a more seamless restoration procedure and yielding better overall outcomes. For a better end result, we at Yesterdays Photo® prioritise retaining as much data as possible.

Are you interested in digitising your cherished photos from the comfort of your own home? We’re here to assist you! At Yesterdays Photo®, we understand the significance of preserving your precious memories. To provide you with the best guidance for scanning your photos at home, read our post “Quick Guide to Scanning Your Photos at Home” a comprehensive blog article that offers specific details and valuable recommendations.

Our blog post covers various aspects, including selecting an appropriate scanner, determining optimal resolution settings, and properly handling and preparing your photos for scanning.

By following our recommended best practices for scanning photos at home, you can effectively preserve your cherished moments with precision and care.

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Australian Heritage Photo Restoration

Australian Historical Restoration and heritage photographic history enhancement

We are Yesterdays photo, an Australian Heritage and Historical photo restoration and archival supplier in Perth Western Australia.

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Photo Restoration Tips

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Photo Restoration Tips – Scanning

WHAT YOU GET OUT OF SCANNING,
DEPENDS HIGHLY ON YOUR INPUT

The first step in digital photo restoration is digitising your photos.

There are a lot of reasons why you should scan all of your old photographs and transparencies, but the main one is that it’s the only method to restore them in a high quality format that will look great when exhibited or printed.

You have control over the exposure and appearance of the image when you scan it yourself. You can alter the resolution, crop off unwanted sections (or leave them in), change the colours and brightness, and make any other adjustments that make sense for the particular image.

It is important to understand the difference between resolution and pixel dimensions. Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image, whereas pixel dimensions refers to the physical size of those pixels. For example, a 300dpi image scanned at 8×10 inches will have more pixels than a 100dpi image scanned at 4×5 inches. The higher the resolution, the more detail can be captured from your old prints or slides.

The higher resolution you are able to scan with when restoring your photo negatives and transparencies, the better results you will get when editing them digitally (in Photoshop or another image editor). however there is a limit on how much information a printed photo, slide or negative can provide.

The digital tools available today allow us to make incredible changes in our images without having much concern about loss of detail due to low resolution scanning. However if you want exceptional quality results then invest in high resolution scans, at Yesterdays Photo we can help!

DO YOU NEED AN EXPENSIVE SCANNER?

Scanning a photo is something plenty of people are familiar with these days, and truth is for general photo restoration purposes most of the flatbed scanners you can find commercially can do an acceptable job.

Indeed technology can make a difference when scanning a photo or a negative, but as long as you use best practices and some common sense, your home scanner can become a powerful tool to convert your photos to a digital format without spending thousands of dollars.

We have indetified and listed a few tips that will help you getting the most out of this process and the best value out of your home scanner.

HERE IS A COMPILATION OF USEFUL
SCANNING TIPS JUST FOR YOU

1. CLEAN YOUR SCANNER SURFACES

This has plenty of common sense, but you will be surprised how often something this simple is overlooked,

It is important to understand that when scanning a photo in high resolution, we will magnifying artifacts, fingerprints and particles laying on your scanner glass, therefore maintaining your scanner clean, can make a difference and contribute positively on the final quality of your digital capture and can minimise future dust and scratches on originals.

Preparation is a critical step to achieve a good outcome, so it is always good practice to clean these areas with the manufacturer ‘s recommended tools, chemicals and methods before digitally-capturing any image. (alcohol-based products are not recommended)

The objective of this is to minimise the amount foreign elements to facilitate the photo editing, remember that best results come from a good preparation, common practices are:

Remove dust and dirt from your scanner. To do this, use a compressed air duster or soft brush to remove dust from the scanner bed, remember that some particles can be hard and scratch the photo or the glass further.
Avoid touching the glass plate of your scanner with fingers, as it may leave oil marks on the glass surface.

2. PREPARE THE ORIGINAL

Ensure that your original is as clean and dust-free as possible before beginning any preparation process of an original.

Cleaning a photo is risky and can impact negatively, so being meticulous and exceedingly cautious with a family heirloom or historical photograph is not only crucial but logical.

If you want to do it well first process an initial scan this will be kind of you insurance, then use a soft brush or cotton swab dipped in distilled water, but be aware that overusing this method could damage your picture. so Instead of targeting vital areas, test the preparation on a non-vital location such as a corner, and measure the result before continuing

Have in mind Some old photos are likely to be colourised manually and water and friction will remove the pigments or contaminate nearby areas, so the work here is surgical.

We strongly advocate hiring a professional to complete this task; nevertheless, if you insist on doing it yourself, be aware that you do it at your own risk.

3. HIGH-RESOLUTION IS CRITICAL

The more information we obtain from the original photo the better for the restoration or photo enhancement process; even if you do not see it directly there is plenty of information in a faded or decouloured photo that can help you, so set up your scanner for the highest-resolution possible regardless if the file size appears to be too large.

It is important to understand the purpose of the photo and the final destination where is going to be used, based on this you can decide before engaging works the level of restoration required.

Print and web drastically differ in resolution requirements, being web specially much more easy to handle, at Yesterdays we can provide you with guidance and professional scanning services with a resolution up to 12800 dpi, large format and negative film scanning.

3. ALWAYS SCAN IN COLOUR

Even when digitalising a photo that its originally in black and white, set your scanner to capture the image in colour, this is particulary useful when editing photos that have been stained or have some colour casting due to the pass of time, UV rays or deterioration of the paper or stock they where printed on.

Photoshop is extremely powerful and can give you control of the different colour channels within a photo, this means that even the slightest colour variations or casts can be manipulated and rectified, by obtaining colour information from the source you will have much more control and fidelity, and can save you or our specialists a ton of time.

4. STRAIGHT UP YOUR PHOTOS & POSITION THE ORIGINAL CAREFULLY

The closer you scan your image to a 90-degree angle the better, this will help technically and will ease the restoration workflow for you or our restoration specialists,

Although straightening images is an easy process in photoshop, there are further benefits by scanning your photos in a 90-degree angle and it is the control of the reflection of light within the texture of the paper or stock the photo has been developed on.

Make sure the original is flat. If you’re scanning a book, make sure it’s lying flat. If you’re scanning a letter or photograph, hold it up to a light and look for any problems with warped edges.

Don’t let your originals wrinkle or get torn during processing; if possible, avoid running them through an automatic document feeder (ADF) so that there is no risk of physical damage.

5. GOOD INPUT = GOOD OUTPUT

Your scanner, the software you use, and the resolution all have an impact on how well your scanned image turns out. The original is the most crucial component. Don’t expect an image that has been scanned to look nice if it is too dark, fuzzy, missing features, or scratched up. The scanner and software can only do so much to correct for such substandard photographs.

Automatic adjustments may produce aberrations and anomalies that aren’t visible when viewing the original. This specifically occurs when scanning colour images captured with budget or film cameras lacking automated exposure control tools.

For a professional scanning service do not hesitate to contact us, we are alway happy to help!

6. SCANNING NEGATIVES AND TRANSPARENCIES

There are some things you can do to enhance the quality of your scans, despite the fact that scanning negatives and transparencies might be more challenging:

As was previously mentioned, planning is essential. Prepare the areas in a dust-free environment by using a sensitive microfiber towel or air duster to gently clean both sides of the scanner glass.

Make sure your slides or negatives don’t have any moisture on them.

Before putting them on the scanner area, wipe off any remaining moisture with a fresh, clean cloth. Some scanners will provide you transparency guides to place these and keep them stable.

7. USING A DRUM SCANNER

High-End Drum scanning is an expensive and time-consuming process that we only advise when the value of the photograph is sufficient, (not necessarily commercial value). A drum scanner is an exceptionally high resolution device that has a rotating drum in its interior and functions to obtain detailed and sharp reproduction of transparencies and photographs.

So if you are serious about digitising your photograph or transparencies this is one of the preferred options of many photographers and conservationists around the world.

8. PRO-TIP!

A professional tip is to scan your photo 4 times, by rotating the photography to 90, 180, 270, and 360 degreee and scanning it using the same scanner setup, you will achieve an extra set of detail, this is particulary helpful to remove or minimise the textures inherited from the original paper or stock as it reduces considerably the glare caused by the reflection of the scanner light when bouncing on the paper texture.

Once scanned you can use photoshop to align the layers and get the most of the photo using different blending modes to add up or subtract pixels and color information.

Note: be aware that when dealing with some type of textures a different technique of post-processing named FFT (Fast-fourier transform) can help you achieving amazing results in record time.

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