Mathis Photographic Restorations
11035 W 96th Place
Overland Park, KS  66214
Jim@MathisPhoto.net
913-269-6709

Site Updated March 2024



Mathis Photographic Restoration
11035 W 96th Pl
Overland Park, KS 66214
913-269-6709
Jim@MathisPhoto.net
Since 1973

Hours - 10 AM to 6PM, Monday through Thursday
Call for an appointment

Photoshop Professional
I specialize in colorizing black and white photographs.

Professional Retouching and Custom Photo Printing


What we do....
First we make a high resolution scan of your photo, negative, or slide. Then using modern digital techniques, we correct the color and repair any stains or damages. Finally we make new prints to your size requirements using museum quality materials that will last for hundreds of years, giving lasting enjoyment to your family for generations.

How Long Do Photographs Last?

In my business of restoring photographs, one of the most common complaints is faded color photographs from the 1970’s- 80’s. Daily, I see pictures that have bleached out to various shades of green to magenta.

 

I got into the photo finishing business in 1973. Before that I was involved in photographic retail where we not only sold equipment but handled a lot of photofinishing as well. It was in the 1970’s that a scandal of sorts broke out when people began to be concerned by the lack of longevity of color prints. Just about everyone in the business knew that the color prints of the day had a life expectancy of somewhere between ten and twenty years. Since photos were promoted as a way to hand down memories through generations, this was a big concern that started to become known to the general public, especially on the many professionally produced images that were proudly displayed on the walls in customer’s homes.


Our business was strictly black and white photography, which is inherently stable, primarily because we wanted to make only permanent prints. I couldn’t in good conscience make prints that I knew would begin fading in a very short time. That is the big reason that fine art photography was limited to black and white for many years.


I would expect that there may still be photo labs that are using the old cheaper chromogenic process, though the papers have improved somewhat over that used in the 70’s and 80’s. Most color prints today, though, use permanent pigments which do not fade. The paper and ink manufacturers are saying hundreds of years without any deterioration should now be possible.  That is the only kind of paper that I use and a savvy customer will make sure that an image they want to be enjoyed by their grandchildren is printed on this type of paper.


When a customer brings a faded color print from 25 to 50 years ago, I scan the print and then use the computer to adjust the curves of the various color layers to as close as possible to what they were when the image was first made. Sometimes this is fairly easy but sometimes the color is so far off that it cannot be brought back. If I cannot bring back the original color by adjusting the curves, luminance, saturation, and the like, it is actually possible to paint the missing colors in by hand.


I then make new prints using permanent pigment ink and museum quality acid free paper, providing the kind of heirloom quality color photos that were only wishful thinking forty years ago.

Black and white pictures? They have always been permanent if correctly processed, sometimes they weren’t. The issues I see with old black and white photographs are tears, scratches, or damage that may have been attributed to the family dog.


Do you have faded color photos or “dog chewed” black and whites? Give me a call. I can help.


Restoration Samples

These are examples of various photo restoration projects we have done.

What size are your pictures?


We have photographs on just about every wall in our house. They range in size from 8x10 up to 40 x 60 inches. It is easy to see the size of a photograph that is printed and hanging on the wall, but a photograph in digital form is not so obvious, but just as important.

In digital form, images are measured in pixels which comes from the term picture-elements. A photograph can be any size in digital form. When viewed on a screen such as a computer monitor, phone, or television, the visual size is determined by the resolution of the device and the size of the digital image. 

The standard for printing a digital file to paper is 300 pixels per inch, depending a little on the printer and the media. That means that an 8x10 inch photograph will be 2400 x 3000 pixels (8x300 by 10x300.) A 16x20 print will be 4800 x 6000 pixels. If we multiply the width by the height the 16x20 print would be 28.8 million pixels. This is the native size of an image straight out of a 28-meg camera. Most cameras have a way to adjust the image size in the camera. Always use the largest possible size even if you don’t plan to make large prints, because reducing the image size is easy, but enlarging it results in lower quality. If you are planning to have books printed by a service such as Shutterfly, images must be at least 300 pixels per inch to be printed.

I am always a little nervous when clients email me images to restore or print because they are often somewhere around 400 by 600 pixels, that is, the images are only 2 inches wide on the long side meaning they are going to be too small to retouch or print. I presume that this is because they either have the camera set to a very low resolution or the email program is reducing the image size. If you upload a photo to Facebook or other social media platform, Facebook will downsize it to fit their requirements which are extremely small, about 400 pixels. If we then download that image from Facebook, it is no longer useable to be printed larger than a postage stamp.

Do not confuse image size with file size, which is a totally different thing. I talk about image size and file size a lot in my Basic Photoshop class at Johnson County Community College. The next one is November 3. 

I will gladly restore your old photos or do custom printing of your digital files, but the first thing I look at is the image size in pixels to make sure that the image is large enough to work with. In short, become aware of the size of your digital files. Size matters.


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