5×7 Dry Plate | Restored After restoration, a nice 4th of July parade image becomes visible. Of course, the restoration step takes more time and effort than all other steps combined. My restoration objective was to only restore the image to a new condition but not enhance it. Aperture’s brush tools were used to restore the image including: retouch, skin smoothing, dodge, burn, and definition. Also, a crop was necessary to remove large smudges which were not repairable. The restoration process:
- Removed hundreds of age stops; dark or light spots mostly like due to the age of the dry plate.
- Removed or fixed smudges and scratches.
- Fixed distortion due to liquid droplet spills on the emulsion.
The image is still not in a new condition, but it’s much better than is was. Under magnification, small black spots can be seen. See 5×7 Dry Plate | a 7 Image Story for a description of all the restoration steps taken for this image.
