Printing Old Family Photos

Printing precious old photographs is a special reward for us. We know how important these pictures are. We can't tell you how many times people have been amazed and how good we feel when their (and our) eyes get a bit watery when seeing what we've done.

It is important to note that many old color photos are printed with dyes which fade over a few decades. (Our prints are pigment based and do not fade as quickly). Photos earlier than the eighties are already in jeopardy and you may wish to review our photo restoration services.

FAQs on Printing Old Photos

We need a digital file!
In other words, the photo, negative or slide needs to be scanned. We CAN scan images for you. See our additional photo printing services.

We realize you may have apprehensions on sending your precious photos to us. And while there is a chance a shipment may get lost, it is a rare thing.

If shipping to us, please remove the photo out of any frames. Place into a ziplock bag with corrugated cardboard on both sides.

But, you may have a scanner or an all-in-one printer at home or in your office. You need to get the documentation and review how to scan the photograph. Please do this as 30% of the time, we need people to rescan the image, or send it to us.

DO NOT USE YOUR PHONE TO SCAN THE IMAGE!
Even if you have an app. We have found the quality of these scans to be so poor, we almost will always say it is not worth the money for us to restore or print.

We can print any size you want (up to our print size limit).
In the order form, you may have to select the smallest available size and then in the comments, tell us the final image size you wish. If emailing us the order, do the same. General rule of thumb, if a good scan is available, we usually can enlarge the photo to 2x the original size, sometime a little more. Take a magnifier to the original and see what is really there! That's what we do.

Photo Restoration

Regular Service does allow us a small amount of time for restoration.
If not in too bad a shape, you may not need our photo restoration services. This often includes tone correction, minor retouching, color correction, and/or conversion to Black and White and possibly a mono tone or duotone conversion.

Quick Service does not allow for any real restoration. Basic tone and color correction only.

We usually recommend a Luster, Semi-matte or Matte paper surface. Exhibition Fiber, a deluxe soft gloss paper with a light texture is available at additional cost. Epson Natural Hot Press, a non-coated matte paper, and Palo Duro Baryta Fiber 300 are excellent choices for older prints as they tend to mimic papers from the past. Do understand that there were hundreds of paper types in the past, and many photographers made their own!

Can we make your new photo look like an old photo?
Technically, no. First, we are not using silver based emulsions that give it that metallic sheen. Also, photographers often made their own photo paper, which could be anything. We have introduced some papers (Nov 2020) that may mimic older paper surfaces better, but, these will be at a bit of an additional cost as they are often 200-400% more in our cost. Also, if we restore an image, we will be to some extent, removing that old picture look. Finally, those prints framed under glass will usually not be affected and look like an old photo.

Emailing us an order.
Using the contact form, please get in touch with us and describe your needs/order. We will provide instructions from there. Large orders, say over 5 images are usually best done this way. When you and us are in agreement on the job requirements, we will email you an invoice from PayPal.

Getting the final file.
Often, just ask, and we'll supply you the final file in JPEG via email. We're supposed to charge $5/image for this, but, we usually don't on larger orders.