picture preservation and restoration

[GreenheadJim]

My mom has some old photos from the 1800's of our family that she wants to get preserved. Do any of you know anyone that has a proven business around that does that?

[mallardhunter]

Since nobody's responded, let me try a bit. Copy them first and foremost. Good quality digital camera, or scan 'em. Camera is a LOT faster. Make prints from the copies and preserve the originals by putting them in a dark (metal, plastic, or 100% rag) box in a climate-controlled environment. Do not use just any ole cardboard box as the acid in cardboard is bad for old photos, as is light.
Do not mount the originals as this hurts, not helps the preservation.
Do not frame the originals (unless you use 100% rag board and preservation glass). Framing them to preserve them is expensive. Cheap, normal framing does not preserve; it hastens the decline.
Light is your enemy as is acid (found in normal cardboard and paper), humidity and heat.

Dunno about a company that would do any better job of preserving 'em.

[booger]

Meridian may be a little far to go, but Quick Prints is a mom-n-pop place that does all that type of stuff. I had this old wrinkled large sized negative that I carried around for years "gonna get it fixed some day". I finally brought it to them a couple of months ago. This is the result:

This is my dearly departed granny getting down on a chicken hawk, snake oil salesman, revenue agent, hehehhe who knows?




Quick Prints has several different levels of restoration, good, better, best, kinda thing. Getting this negative repaired, printed, a couple of 8x10, ten 3X5 and putting it on a digital disc was $65.00. I didn't go all out on the "best" trying to get everything perfect, this looked okay to me.

[jacksbuddy]

There was a place in Cleveland right across the street from the courthouse that did this sort of stuff a few years ago. I can't recall the name and don't know if they're still around, but they did a good job on making some prints of Red and Ellenor for the Grandchildren.

[regishay]

my wife had a old photo of her granddad that we just took to walmart and had it scanned. We enlarged it, and really didnt care to try to preserve the photo since we had a good copy of it now. They have thier scanning stations in front of the photo counter that was very easy to use.

[novacaine]

Last year I spoke to someone (I think Dr. Luther Brown) at Delta State University. They told me that DSU or the Charlie Capps Center had a program where they work with individuals on preservation of documents (books,photos,papers). I will try to find out in a day or two and p.m. you.

[GreenheadJim]

thnx novacaine

[duckkiller]

If your close to Louisville try John Clark or Kevin Hudson at imageworks. If know one answers there call Discount Video or Northgate Cinema 4 as Mr. Clark owns all those.

[Seymore]

I've started scanning all the pictures that come into the house like school pictures. I went back and scanned all our wedding pictures and have a whole box of pictures that I need to scan. Wish I could find somebody who had a high speed scanner that could zip all ours through instead of this combo printer/scanner we have.