One of the things I enjoy about working in digital is restoring old photographs. My Great Uncle, Percy Tuttle, was a pilot in World War I (his father was the photographer Hammond Tuttle who I wrote about in an earlier blog on panoramic photos). Growing up I remember looking through Uncle Percy's pile of old brittle and yellowed photographs from 1917. They are an amazing window into the word of early aviation. These photos were taken less then fifteen years after the Wright Brother's first flight! The airplanes pictured here are the French Caudron G3 and a Curtiss HS-1L flying boat. Glenn Curtiss developed and flew the first flying boat in Hammondsport, New York, about an hour away from Rochester.

One of the challenges of restoring old photographs is not to over-correct them. In many ways, it's like restoring an old antique, you want to clean it up but not add a new finish. Working in Adobe Photoshop, I usually adjust the levels, remove dust and scratch marks and try to bring the balance back to a more original looking black and white or sepia image. It's tempting to use tools that over sharpen or increase contrast, but that can often degrade the overall quality of the photo.

Digitizing (scanning) old photographs and scrapbooks also gives them new life. It's a great way to archive and protect old images and it also creates new opportunities for sharing via blogs or email.

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