Can a badly damaged photograph really be restored?

Scratches, fading, stains, tears and missing corners reconstruct convincingly. What cannot be recovered is detail that was never captured — a face lost to a hole in the print is reconstructed plausibly, not truthfully, which matters if you use the image as evidence.

Is colorization historically accurate?

It is plausible rather than documented. Skin, vegetation and sky are usually right; a specific uniform facing or a dress fabric is a guess. Keep the black-and-white original as the record and treat the colour version as a presentation of it.

Should I scan or photograph an old print?

Scan at 600 dpi where you can. Where the print is fragile, curled or mounted in an album, a sharp phone photograph in indirect daylight is a perfectly good input and safer for the object.

What does upscaling do that a bigger scan does not?

It adds detail that the original never resolved, inferred from what similar photographs look like. It is what makes a thumbnail-sized portrait printable, and it is inference — so faces should still be recognisable as the same person, not merely sharp.

Will restoration change what people look like?

It should not, and this is the thing to check. Compare eyes, mouth and hairline before and after; if the person looks like a different, smoother person, the result is decorative rather than a restoration, and a lighter pass is the right call.

How do animated portraits work?

A single still is used to generate slight, natural head movement and blinking. It is an animation of one photograph, not footage of your ancestor, and it is worth labelling as such when you share it with family.

Can photographs help date and place an ancestor?

Often decisively. A studio stamp names a town and a working period, clothing and uniforms narrow the decade, and a shopfront or vehicle in the background can pin a street. That is a location plus a date range — exactly what a record search needs.

Do I lose the original when I restore it?

No — restoration produces a new file. Keep the untouched scan as your master copy, because a future tool will do better than today's, and only an unedited original lets you redo the work.

Vestigee — Restoring Old Photographs | Blog

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