PhotoWise Calgary

Category: Calgary Photo Restoration

Articles on the topic of Photo Restoration in Calgary, Alberta from the ‘Your Memories Matter’ blog

  • Preserving Your Family Legacy With Photo Restoration

    Preserving Your Family Legacy With Photo Restoration

    First off, I would like to wish each and every one of you a very Happy New Year!

    Here’s hoping that you greatly enjoyed the holidays and were able to take lots of photos with your family members and friends. They will certainly make for many great memories!

    Preserving Your Family Legacy

    You are very likely looking forward to making new memories in the months to come.  With today’s smartphones doubling as digital cameras, those memories will be easier to hold on to than ever before. However…

    Do you find your memories of years past beginning to fade?

    Of course you do. It’s only natural. However, if I substituted the word “memories” with “photographs” in that question, it would likely provide the same answer. Both our memories and old photographs tend to fade over time. We can only remember so many vivid details. When it comes to old photographs, they can’t help but endure a mix of erosion, wear and tear and fading from age or poor storage. This is why I so highly recommend Photo Restoration.

    At PhotoWise, we offer custom digital photo restoration, retouching and enhancement to give new life to your old photos! We use a state-of-the-art scanning process that makes digital copies of your old and tattered photographs, saving them in very high resolutions. We then manually restore each photo using professional software.

    To tell you the truth, this requires a very skillful touch. It takes both precision and time to adequately restore an old photo, especially if it is in really bad shape. This process, by the way, presents no risks to your original photos. They will not be damaged any further than they already are. We care for your photos like they were our own.

    What are the major benefits of photo restoration?

    They undo seemingly permanent damage.  Old photos generally take quite the beatings. They get folded and bent. They get scratched and ripped. They get torn and sliced. Some even get burnt! Our Photo Restoration process helps to do away with those “blemishes” to bring old pictures back to states that appear as if they were recently taken. It’s quite the remarkable outcome. I truly enjoy the reactions I get when my customers see their old once-thought-to-be-unsalvageable pictures look brand new again.

    They help to preserve your family history.

    If you ask me, this is the biggest deal. The act of restoring photos is a lot more than saving old pictures. It keeps your family legacy alive. Most people believe that their family photos are their most prized possessions and list them as the number one thing they’d most want to save if their houses were burning down.

    Keep in mind that your restored photos are also saved digitally. Once your photos are restored, you can make as many copies of them as you wish. Digitally restored photos make incredible gifts for family members and friends.

    I believe that yesterday’s memories preserved with today’s technology provide tomorrow’s treasures. Please don’t hesitate to contact me today to learn more about the Photo Restoration services offered by PhotoWise!

  • How To Give New Life To Old Photographs

    How To Give New Life To Old Photographs

    How To Provide New Life To Old Memories

    Now that September is here, our children are about to embark on a new school year where more memories will be made. There’s a special feeling that comes with the first day of school each year – for both children and their parents. Parents can’t help but pull out the camera to capture those infectious smiles (and sometimes frowns) that appear on the faces of their children during this time of year.

    I gleefully imagine that, one day, they’ll be able to look back on the photos and share stories with their kids about the memories they made while in school. Of course, in the future, it will be a lot simpler for my kids to be able to preserve and share their photos than it was for me – because just about every picture taken these days is saved and backed up digitally. If you’re like me and you have a ton of old printed photos, know that there’s no better way to ensure their preservation than to have them digitized!

    Digitizing your photos protects them from being lost forever!

    Old Photos To Be Restored in Calgary

    Not only is it a good idea to scan your old photos so that they can be shared online (emailing them to family members who live abroad is a whole lot easier, faster, and cheaper than shipping a stack of photos in the mail), but photo scanning also helps to preserve memories that would otherwise deteriorate.

    Here’s hoping you never have to encounter a mishap that destroys your photos forever…

    “We never think it’s going to happen to us until – well – it happens to us,” comments Curtis Bisel on ScanYourEntireLife.com, “We build our homes with wood and run pipes in and around them so it only seems reasonable to expect a few of them here and there might catch on fire or get really wet. Your insurance might replace a lot of possessions, but it’s not going to bring back those albums full of paper prints.”

    Digitization can breathe new life into your old and damaged photos!

    Our dear ancestors deserve more than to have their precious photographs kept in storage – fading away all crumpled and torn. Luckily, modern technology has blessed us with a little something called digital photo restoration. It makes your old photos new again, our clients often say it’s ‘like magic’.

    “As soon as you digitize your vintage pictures, deterioration is arrested,” explains Frank Arnoth on SaveFamilyPhotos.com, “Perhaps more importantly, the digitized images can, in many cases, be brought back to their original glory with relative ease, if the changes have not been too great.”

    Before and After of Digital Photo Restoration Calgary
    Our Photo Restoration Service; Before and After
    Did you know that both Photo Scanning and Photo Restoration are specialties at PhotoWise?

    The before and after photo above is from my personal collection of ancestry photos. This precious little photo is only 2 inches big, cut on various angles, and was also folded, scratched and stained.  It was carried around this way for many years and traveled half way around the world before it reached it’s current home in my cherished collection.  I was determined to repair it and share it with my extended family – both as a digital image and published in my family heritage photo books.  Mission Accomplished!

    At PhotoWise we use a variety of professional high-resolution scanning machines and custom software applications to preserve and restore your precious photos.  Each photo is scanned by hand, checked for quality, and includes straightening, cropping, and basic image enhancement.  If your photo is damaged and needs more repair we will scan it and digitally restore it without affecting the original print.

    Please don’t hesitate to contact me today to find out how we can help organize, digitize and restore your family photos to bring new life to them and preserve your precious memories forever!

  • Dear Empty Nesters, I Can Help You Downsize!

    Dear Empty Nesters, I Can Help You Downsize!

    Dear Empty Nesters, I Can Help You Downsize!

    Welcome to June! It’s a wondrous month for most kids, because it represents the last month of school. For so many parents, however, it’s a time of year when they fear how crazy their homes are about to get with the kids being in them more often. Needless to say, most parents have their hands full during the summertime. That is, of course, parents of school-aged children.

    Empty nesters have the complete opposite dilemma. Their kids are all grown up and have moved out of the house, leaving them to resume lives as couples. For many parents of adult children, the transition to living without kids is a tough one. Their homes were designed to house a much larger grouping of individuals than just the two of them alone. So what to do? Many, as you are likely aware, choose to downsize.

    What makes downsizing so difficult for empty nesters?

    Most people find that they have homes full of no-longer-needed items. In other words, clutter becomes a major issue. Clearing the clutter, therefore, becomes an intimidating task. Hans Wydler and Steve Wydler lead the Wydler Brothers real estate team in Washington, D.C. They are practically experts in the field of helping empty nesters de-clutter during their downsizing processes.Close up portrait of middle aged couple over white background

    “The first three things we tell empty-nesters to do to get their home ready for market is to de-clutter, de-clutter, de-clutter,” they share in The Washington Post, “It’s amazing how many things one can accumulate over a lifetime. As we age, we also tend to hold onto things as they connect us with our past. We know first-hand. We lost our dad almost 20 years ago, and to this day, our mom still refuses to throw out any of his belongings.”

    What can help empty nesters let go of their belongings?

    A couple of months ago, I highlighted the importance of photo preservation in the PhotoWise Blog. In doing so, I pointed out that capturing images of our prized possessions is often a great (and even therapeutic) way to hold on to your cherished items. In fact, the photos can often serve as replacements of the items themselves.

    Interior designer, Kathia Emery agrees with this practice and lists it as an excellent method of overcoming the “emotional power our belongings have over us”.  As reported by Bridget A. Otto on OregonLive.com, Emery has advised many of her clients to “take photos of the things they can’t take with them — the things they might feel guilty about letting go, such as their grandfather’s chair or a family piano.”

    How can PhotoWise help empty nesters to downsize?

    One of the ways we’ve been able to help with downsizing is through our in-home Photo Organizing service.  I am happy to help you gather your photos from all of the albums, boxes, frames and nooks and crannies around your home and sort them into a nice organized and compact system.  From there we often scan these photos so that the whole family can enjoy them.

    Another option we offer to empty nesters downsizing is to create special photobooks with such titles as “Our Family Home”. In them we showcase photos that capture the various pieces of memorabilia, furniture and other belongings that used to reside in their older, much larger homes.  I had one client who took photos of each of his kid’s rooms – untouched – before they renovated so that there would always be photographic proof of how each room was personally decorated by each child before they left home.

    Dear empty nesters, let’s preserve those family keepsakes together!  Contact me today to learn more about how I can help you to downsize!