vintage image restoration

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Renata and Jan have had the honor of restoring art from Getty Images,National Geographic, the Henry Ford Museum, the Science Museum in Britain and other collections. We offer flexible work flow for the tightestdeadlines and great value because of our experience. Our tasksinclude:

image restoration for large format reproductionsarchive organization, advanced image editing, and digitalizationfocus on fine art photography and vintage poster artwebsite design and other marketing materialsproject planning and management

It is our belief that a specialized approach brings better results. That iswhy we primarily focus on image restoration of prints, black andwhite photography and vintage poster art.

We have been fortunate to work on great images from some of themasters. Many of the works in our art restoration portfolio range fromthe 1900s to the 1960s and the artists include Alfons Mucha,Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Bernard Villemot, Leonardo Cappiello,Tom Purvis and many others.

News12/2009...Relocating to San Francisco, 94107 01/2010...Working on the Patrick Nagel archive

© The images shown in this portfolio are subject to copyright by theirowners, are for viewing only and are not intended for reproduction.

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B A C K G R O U N D

Our passion for digital art restoration began in 2005 while working for Vintage Arte, LLC. This rapidaly expanding art publishing company based in Southern California hired us to handle the intake of newarchives. Over the course of the next two years we worked in-houseat their Santa Barbara facility and expanded the company databaseby more than 20,000 new images. With our arrival most of the company business centered on partnerships with image suppliers, producing print-per-order limited edition print runs and selling the posters online through the company web sites as well as third party resellers such as art.com. The company also offered third partyimage editing, retouching and production services (Bridgeman, Artkey and others). Renata and Jan were directly involved in the production process. Towards the end of 2005, the CEO of Vintage Arte Richard Weedn launched ArteHouse, LLC. Within several months this new direction even further diversified the company business and scope of projects we worked on. The new company now produced personalized web sites and content for Henry Ford Museum, Ducati, Primedia and many other customers.

The image archives were organized and tracked by a central web-based database and stored on in-house servers. Besides building and running

the pre-production department responsible for the intake of new archives, Renata and Jan collaborated on other projects throughout the company day-to-day operations: 1. Finishing work on limited edition posters and other projects with Michael Hagler, the company art director; 2. Providing feedback for the IT department regarding the usability of the back end and workflow; 3. Designing front ends for customer web sites; 4. Sizing and printing for head of production (largely giclee printing process on eight Epson 9800 printers); 5. Content editing and keywording for marketing director; 6. Generating contact sheets and review web sites for the CEO and key partners; 7. Streamlining the intake of new images (please see next page).


W O R K F L O W

Adobe Photoshop is the main tool of our trade. Other tools include Adobe Acrobat, Bridge, CSS coding, Dreamweaver, InDesign and other software. Renata and Jan were directly involved with the whole intakeprocess: A. Handling large batches of transparencies from image suppliers; B. Scanning on the FUJI F5000 flat bed scanner; C. Assigning SKUs to batches and keeping track of the images; D. Uploading the images into different parts of the system; E. Researching and writing keywords for indexability; F. Exporting into several formats (from web jpegs to tiffs for storage on servers) G. Evaluating which images will get priority treatment based on their quality; H. Sending updates to other people at company about new content; I. Producing large format master files (the digital image restoration process is broken down on the following pages).


S T O R Y O F A N I M A G E

Let's consider an image of an English travel poster from the 1920s. A lovely image of the Orient! It's a large format poster that was printed in two pieces. The print run was not ideal, but the poster was displayed outside a travel agency for holidaymakers to see. After a couple of seasons passed (the poster was exposed to sun and rain) it was torn down and brought home by one of the agency clerks. The paper held together for the most part and the poster was mounted and displayed inher family living room for several years before it made its way to the attic.There it remained folded for several decades. The poster was discovered by her grandson in the 1980s and latersold in an auction. The auction photographer, shooting under adverse conditions, was rushed and used flash. The picture did not sit straight on its easel, the color checker stayed tucked away in the kit bag and luckily the image came out relatively sharp. The transparency migrated through several archives (let's say boxes on the shelf!) of different publishing houses and was handled by a number of people along the way. At itsfinal destination nearly a decade ago, the transparency was scanned for a small format publishing project (reproduction for magazine).


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Scanning technology has progressed since that time. Now the archive owner is keen to print a set of limited edition posters that are of considerably larger format. ........................................................................................................................... Damage to the image took place on four levels. One level consisted of tears, water, fading, mold, dirt collected in folds and other damage to the original art work. Shortcomings in the photography (color shift, shooting angle and flash reflection) were the second level. Damage to the transparency (scratches, hair, dust, fingerprints and color shift) is level three. Poor scan quality lead to loss of data (edge detail and color) and represented the last level of damage. Occasionally, there is an additional factor to consider: The quality of the original print! ........................................................................................................................... Before image restoration began we had to decide if we would treat the poster as an artefact and remove only the damage caused in the capturing process or we if would go much deeper and get the image as close as possible to what the artist had intended before he brought it to the printing company.

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P O R T F O L I O S A M P L E

[...portfolio sample 1/14...]The image as well as a selected detail before and after restoration.

© The images shown on this page are subject to copyright by their owners, arefor viewing only and are not intended for reproduction.

This British Railways poster from 1980 propagates passenger safety ontrain station platforms. It's in the 1950s comic book retro style. Althoughthe artist used solid blocks of color in its design, the print actuallyrequired many local repairs due to its original medium and printingmethod. Bucketing techniques possible in other similar artwork were off limits during the art restoration process.


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This is a photograph taken before Amelia Earhart's last flight. DepartingNew Guinea on July 2, 1937 during her cross-world flight, she andnavigator Fred Noonan never arrived at their next destination. Whenrestoring the images of historical personages, the art restorer needs torespect the character of the subject. Earhart's rugged beauty, includingher lips chapped from winds and sea water, remains unaltered.









Our Centenary 1825-1925 was designed by Fred Taylor. In the designTaylor incorporated the artwork of Terence Tenison Cuneo. Fordecades, many such vintage posters were stored in less than idealconditions before finding their way into museums or private collectionsand mold is fairly common. Please note the image detail.










Unfortunately, many posters were stored "efficiently" over the years andfolds are very common as is the case of this Capacity Mobility posterdesigned by H.G. Gawthorn for London & North Eastern Railway. Thebetter case scenario is when the folds leave only lines and avoid thedetailed part of the image and typography. In this case, the foldsactually protrude and the light during the photographing left a glare alongsome of the folds. It is recommended to use diffused light and avoidflash when capturing images for art reproduction.









A cool and smoggy day in December 1929. Five flights up, mechanicsare testing race cars on the roof of the Fiat factory in Turin, Italy. Theturns of this full oval rooftop racetrack were actually designed toappease the laws of physics. Historical photographs such as this oneare always a challenge for the restorer. Over the decades, the image ispassed down from archive to archive and before it reaches your desk itusually shows much wear.









Edouard Alexandre Bernard designed this poster for a Ford dealershipin Paris. A skilled caricaturist, Bernard is largely unknown today; hisclient is long out of business and the street where the dealership waslocated no longer exists, making a historical reconstruction of thecontext for this artwork an exercise in sentiment. What is left is a beautifully detailed image filled with movement and humor. When restoring artwork in this highly detailed style it is important to divide the image into sections so no part is left untreated.










Much has been written about the high level of morale and discipline ofthe British armed forces. Here, an officer is jumping over twentymembers of the Royal Artillery Regiment on a motorcycle. How wouldyou like to be lying down at the end of this line-up? When sharpeningfaded black and white photographs, less generally means more and thedigital image restorer must proceed with caution to bring out the image and avoid pixel maps at the same time.










Tom Purvis designed East Coast Joys, a series of posters, for LNER.Purvis's dynamic style and the use of vibrant solid color surfaces are a pleasure to work with. Tom Purvis and Frank Newbould are some of our favorite British commercial poster illustrators. When preparing artwork for publishing, the art restorer can either treat the poster as an artefact and include the white border that usually includes the printer's information or crop the artwork and reprint only what the author originally submitted.










Pieter Irwin Brown designed the Your Continental Holiday poster for a railway company. Along with prints and other artwork, Brown created a number of travel posters with destinations in the UK, continental Europe and worldwide, especially the Far East. Night scenes are not common in vintage poster art and Brown brilliantly makes use of bright colors to illustrate the excitement of your next holiday. Typography posesa particular challenge here because writing black on white is somewhatmore forgiving during the image restoration process.










Bernard Villemot, one of the most influential French commercial posterartists of all time, is well known for his commercial art posters forOrangina and Perrier. During his fruitful career ranging from the 1930sto the 1980s, he also created this advertising poster for Vivorangesoda. The poster is not well known, but from the use of geometry,negative space and realistic portrayal of the product our guess is that itdates to the early 1950s.







[...portfolio sample 11/14...]The image as well as a selected detail before and after r

© The images shown on this page are subject to copyright by their owners, for..]

© The images shown on this page are subject to copyright by their owners, for viewing only and are not intended for reproduction.

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Swiss engineer Gerder is on his way to Spain inside his motor wheel.Publishing black and white photography on the internet brings up aninteresting discussion. If you're viewing this page on a Mac you mightsee it as somewhat light. If you're on a Windows based system it mayappear as slightly dark. One solution is to create two separate web siteswith an entry on the launch page with jpegs adjusted accordingly forboth screens. Remember those awkward presentations from the 1990swith a separate entry for HTML and Flash? The other solution is to aimdown the middle and hope for the best, because the screen will notreplace the silver gelatin in the real thing any time soon.




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This 1926 avant-garde film poster was a collaboration between theStenberg Brothers (Georgii and Vladimir) and Yakov Rukelski. Boxer'sBride, a German romantic comedy now forgotten by most, is madeeternal by one of its promotional posters designed by masters of thetrade. Some of the greatest work in the film poster genre was created inthe Soviet Union beginning in the mid 1920s and ending with the rise ofStalin. We have had the privilege of resoring a number of the Stenbergposters and artwork of other leading artists of the era to their originalstate.










This American Airlines to New York poster (1950s) by Weimer Pursellis a great example of the artist's layered geometric style. The inks andpaper stock of the original poster, passage of time, the lighting used by the photographer to capture the image, handling and age of the photograph transparency, image profiles and other factors can all contribute to the fading of the color black.









Boris Bilinsky, a Russian émigré, lived and worked as a costume and setdesigner and poster artist in Germany and France. This particular vintage poster for the film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, is one of our favoritesand was a challenge to restore. The artwork is composed from two halves.The question remains as to whether the discrepancies are caused by a misprint or if at one point so meone joined the two poster halves fromseparate print runs. Please note the image detail.







C O N T A C T

Jan and Renata Jonak 1695 18th Street #410 SF, CA, 94107(415) 395-6875 (347) 284-9576 skype: ideamaking digi talart f ix@gmail .com www.digitalartfix.com


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