Saturday
Jul042009
« July 4th 1910 »
Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 10:37AM
Ooops! Someone broke this glass negative, then pieced it together and printed it anyway.
A little salvage work and an attempt to repair what was missing:
Won't win any prizes, but good enough for government work. Have a good 4th!
Reader Comments (3)
Remarkable! Well done restoration work. I would never have thought it was possible.
Out of curiosity, did you paste a woman's face on the body of the headless person in the front seat? Artistic license or were you able to actually see a face when you lightened the photo? Amazing job!
Pasting on a face is difficult because of finding the proper angle needed – and I personally have a authenticity problem with doing that to an antique photo which should not be tampered with in that way. I used the dodging (lightening) tool in Photoshop to see what I could get – surprisingly it revealed enough basic detail, though horribly grainy, that I was able to then smooth and airbrush a reasonably acceptable version of the face that was actually there; it works well enough at web resolution but would not be much to look at very large or for print purposes. The original was quite small for a glass negative anyway. Restoring prints that have missing parts is a challenge and an awful grind; I don't do it often. The one of the woman and the electric car was a lot of work but far more successful. This one I did just for fun (yeah, I know, my idea of fun is dismal).