Do you do restoration work on the original photograph?

No. We make a copy of the original picture and work only on the copy. The chance of further damage to your photograph is too great to risk restoration on the original print.

Can you make a straight copy, without restoration?

Yes. Our services include restoration as an option. Some originals are in such good condition that restoration is not necessary.

How much does restoration work cost?

That depends on the condition of the original print. We offer different levels of restoration at different costs. We would be glad to mail you a complete price list of our restoration services and print costs. You can download a copy of our price list here.

Will you send my original work out from the studio?

No. Your original will remain at our location. All work is done in the studio. We will store your original safely while it is in-house.

Is it worthwhile to get my photos copied or restored?

Our services are meant for important family heirloom photographs. If you have family snapshots that you need copied, a photo finishing store or drug store can copy them more economically than we can. This is because we do all our work by hand rather than with automatic machines. Our quality is unsurpassed.

Does the cost of restoration include a finished print?

No. Print costs are in addition to restoration costs. Again, you may order just copy prints if you don't want to have restoration done.

Can every picture be restored?

Although we can improve the appearance of almost any photograph, not every picture can be made to look "new" again. If too much damage has been done to an area of the image that includes a face, we cannot recreate the face that has been destroyed. Also, if too much detail has faded away from your original, we can improve the picture but we cannot bring back what has been lost. If you bring in your picture to the studio we will be glad to tell you whether we can restore it successfully or not.

Can I enlarge an original picture to make a bigger size?

Yes, within reason. Even with our advanced digital technology, we do not recommend enlarging a picture to more than twice its original dimensions unless you are willing to accept quality loss. So if your original picture is about 4 inches by 5 inches, we wouldn't normally enlarge it beyond 8 inches by 10 inches because the image would begin to suffer.

Are there problems with old picture sizes?

Yes, sometimes. Old photographs rarely were made to the standard sizes that we use today. What this means is that if you want to put your copied photo into a modern frame, you have two options. We can print the picture to its original proportions and you can have a custom matte cut to make it fit a standard size, or we can crop the original to fit a standard size. If we crop, some of your original photo will not show in the copy. This is a decision you will have to make based on what you want to do with the photo after it is copied.  We do not sell custom mattes or frames - if you choose to go this route we recommend taking the finished photo to a custom frame shop.

Will you make a copy negative?

No. For many years we used a traditional 4x5 copy camera for all our restoration work and provided the copy negative to the customer. Digital equipment makes this step unnecessary, however. Also, the digital process we use yields superior results to traditional methods. We do maintain a copy of your digital file so that you may reorder prints at any time.

How long does it take to have copy and restoration work done?