Tuesday 21 August 2018

21/08: Old Family Photos

I won't apologise for the long gap in posts (again) ... somehow life keeps getting in the way. 

A couple of years ago (or maybe longer) I 'cleaned up' some old family photographs and framed them to hang on the wall in my Mum's flat.

My brother recently asked me to print copies for him to hang in his house ... but I couldn't find them in my computer files anywhere.   I just can't believe I did all the work on them and didn't save them.   But over the course of 2 afternoons I checked every single photo file on my computer just in case the photos had inadvertently been dragged to the wrong file.  I even check back over FB and Blogger Posts in case I'd posted them there (which I thought I had actually)  Zilch

So I got the originals from Mum and re-worked them.    Here are the Before and After pics.

An old photo of my Mum - faded, torn in places and with my brother's handwriting!


and the cleaned up version - I used Photoshop Elements 12 ... but I'm a bit of a technophobe and just used the simplest tools - but it made a huge difference.


Mum (and little me) in the garden at my maternal Grand-parents' house


and with the background 'blurred' and cropped and the picture sharpened a bit

My maternal Grandparents - Bob and Daisy - original photo


enhanced photo with tears and marks removed, background blurred a bit  and a bit more definition in the foreground



I couldn't do very much with the (small) photos of my Great Grandparents.   The first photo is of my Grandad (Bob's) parents - my Gt Grandparents

Original photo with the shadow of the photographer spoiling it


I've brightened the photo a bit, slightly blurred the background, removed the shadows and cropped the picture to fit a standard photo frame







and then my other Gt Grandparents on the maternal side (Daisy's parents).  The photo is small and faded




I brightened it a bit, removed the 'washing line' and blurred the background a bit


So now I have these safely stored on computer and have printed out copies for my brother to frame and hang ... phew!

4 comments:

  1. good job with them :) photo retouching can be a PITA to do

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  2. Isn't that a pain when you are sure you saved something and can't find them anywhere. You certainly managed to improve those photos. Good looking woman your mom.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Jennifer and Jo.

    Yep its a real pain, especially as someone has said they remember seeing a couple of these pictures on my Blog in the past. I went through old blog posts but couldn't find them.

    anyway they're done now. I only remember my Gt. Grandmother as a very small, Victorian, lady dressed in black with an ear-trumpet as she was profoundly deaf. I must have been 2 or 3 years old at the time.

    Mum has a box full of old photos but she doesn't know who many of the subjects are ... such a shame nobody thought to write on the backs for the sake of future generations!

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  4. actually as handy as writing on them would have been, the ink can wreck the photos after time so its a good thing no one wrote on them

    ReplyDelete

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