PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY
PHOTO/DOCUMENT
SCANNING & RESTORATION
150+ YEAR ARCHIVAL
PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTING
200+ YEAR ARCHIVAL
12x12 FAMILY MEMORY BOOK
DESIGN & PRINTING
For The Pittsburgh PA Region
OUR SKILLS BELOW
BRING BOOKS
AND PRINTS
TO LIFE
Large Phot0
Collections
We encounter many people who have hundreds of old and small photos from earlier than 1900 to the 1950's, some of which are faded beyond recognition. We specialize in scanning at a $2 price point per scan that includes free restoration of resolution and free tone and color optimization with a final scan size of 70 megabytes for printing in MUCH larger sizes up to 16x20. Sometimes these type of small photos come to life printed big.
Photo Printing
Free Option
This is one of the highly unique styles we offer for printing your small old photos. This is an 16"x20" print of the previous photo. The print is the entire white background and the scanned photo.
In this scan we included the border of the photo, optimized the tone/color, digitally 'floated' the photo on a white background, and gave the photo a drop shadow to make this digital end result truly something special for printing. This style looks beautiful framed and matted or in books.
FREE AT THE SCANNING STAGE UPON REQUEST
Photo Prints
& 12x12 Books
For the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania region, we provide affordably priced, high-end, custom 150+ year archival photo printing done on museum rag cotton paper or archival gloss paper.
Our other specialty is design and printing of 200+ year archival 12x12 lay-flat hard bound books. You benefit from our two decade experience and ability to organize, scan, design and print comprehensive family history book projects. We work with you early to make the process less overwhelming and more enjoyable over a 30-90 day time frame. Our fixed per-page price for design and printing, and 2 FREE PHOTO SCANS/PAGE, make book projects more affordable.
Give us a call and describe what you're trying to accomplish. We'll get you started in the right direction as free consultants.
Book Design
Left Page
Sometimes one image can capture the feel of years of living. One of our philosophies with book design is that bigger is better and less is more. Here one photograph of my grandmother and great grandmother is printed as an 12x12 sized page on the left hand side of a double-page spread. Versus including many photographs of my grandmother, this one captures the feel of our family life together by using only one photograph.
Book Design
Right Page
One of the most important things we offer with book design is including more significant written stories that capture an important moment in life. In the example here, that writing is placed elegantly on the right hand side of a double-page spread in a book. Working with you as writers, our goal is to help you succeed at telling the story of your life by guiding you on the conceptual options for each written page. This creative relationship gives you a chance to end up with a much more meaningful portrait of your life. Books with more significant written stories leave behind a unique intimate in-depth record of moments in your life for future generations to experience. Writing price offered per page.
TWO DECADES
OF EXPERIENCE =
BEAUTIFUL RESULTS
It Starts With
Scanning & Color Restore
Scanning requires professional skills and decades of experience to deliver exceptional color quality for printed photos and books. That's what we bring to your project. We scan each photo or document and spend time to get color and tonal quality just right. Scans can be done on all sizes of slides, negatives, photos and documents. This photo was scanned from a 35mm Kodachrome slide at a 16x20 resolution. We're the best at delivering advanced color quality by spending time optimizing each scan at only $2/scan. Pickup/delivery options. Pittsburgh PA region.
Problem -
Photo Cracks
This photograph had both cracks and image grit on the soldier's face. The overall tonal quality and color was very good.
Restored -
Photo Cracks
A good photograph is restored to original form, with no cracks and smooth and pleasing flesh tones. A 1-hour restore project.
Problem -
Color Fading
Severe color fading like this is caused by other items on top of the photograph blocking sunlight over a long period of time. In this case the photo had a book and newspaper on top of it for many years. The color information is still there but needs to be extracted via advanced digital color science techniques.
Restored -
Color Fading
There were about 25 steps to extracting color and restoring the tonal range of this photograph. Layers are stacked to take dim color information that is then gradually built to a near-original form. The large black areas, where the books were on top, are relatively easy to correct. The most difficult part of this project was to build accurate flesh tones with facial structure and contour. The information is there to do this, but it takes great skill and patience to bring the restored photo to life.
Problem -
Image Aging
This is a detail of a much larger photograph that came to us in pieces. The photograph parts were scanned individually then pieced together digitally to match the correct position.
Restored -
Image Aging
We then copied similar areas of the photos and cut and pasted to fill in missing areas. For instance, the shutters on the front of the building at the top left were rebuilt by copying the single right hand shutter then flipping it horizontally to begin to create the left hand shutter. This is meticulous work and demands a lot of creative approaches and techniques to complete. Final was a 16x20 museum quality print on archival rag cotton paper.
CREATE YOUR LEGACY
Place Your First Order Today