Recommend Digital Restoration & Colorization Service - 1870s Japanese Traditional Clothing Knowledge

I need to hire a professional to digitally restore and colorize a 1871 Carte de Visite portrait of a Japanese man who is dressed in traditional layered Japanese clothing that includes a sword hilt, sash, cording, etc.. He also has a traditional hair style with his hair drawn back into a knot on the top. I need a restorer that is familiar with such period clothing and its coloring.

 

I also wish to enlarge the roughly 2 1/2" x 4" image as much as possible. I am not sure if my Epson V600 is up to the task as compared to a pro scanner that might be used by a professional such as a heidelberg topaz. The V600 is rates at 6,400 by the manufacturer; however 3rd party testing indicated its real optical output is around 1,500. On the other hand I am not sure is such a pro scanner will be able to extract a better scan for the given photo paper stock. Before any cropping a image scanned at 6,400 represents slightly over a 2GB tiff file so the restorer needs a reasonable good computer. I use CS3 and CS6 PS on a Mac Pro with 48GB of RAM, but my skills are not up to this task.

 

I'd prefer a restorer located in the U.S.A. so they are under U.S. law if they for some reason choose to misuse the image - i.e., all services must be conducted under a nondisclosure agreement.

 

This strictly has to be a work-for-hire job whereas I obtain all rights to the derivative works created by the restorer. Some site's TOS actually state that you give away such rights, giving the restorer the right to do whatever they want with the resulting work you are paying them for.

 

A lot of the colorization work I have seen online looks a lot like the first Turner movies to be colorized and that is not what I looking at as I could already do that myself.

 

Any suggestions?

You can try with Proglobalbusinesssolutions for professional quality and affordable photo restoration services .

Moderator Note:

Link removed.

Note that the author is an employee of the mentioned business.

You might contact this woman who I haven't seen in years. She is a long standing photo-retoucher and has worked for the movie industry as a freelance creating movie posters for years, besides doing other photo re-touching. She once told me how she would be called on to introduce authentic period clothing, and cloth actors in them pictorially for the movie posters and how exacting the work was. I did a quick search and it seems she's still on Larchmont Ave in L.A. Her studio is Mary Morano Photo Retouching, (323) 466-4079; 424 N. Larchmont Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90004. I haven't talked to her in years. Hopefully she's still there. You can tell her that Barry Fisher made the referral and says "hi". She may or may not remember me. Good luck!

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An optimistic estimate of the potential amount of detail shows that a 2400 ppi scan would be more than good enough. Arrived at thus:

 

CDVs were usually contact printed from a negative the same size. It's unlikely that a lens and plate of the period would resolve more than 50 lppmm over that format. That resolution would be further reduced by the texture of the printing paper causing some gapping between the negative and print emulsions. So if we take 50 lppmm as the absolute maximum; that only requires 100 pixels/mm or ~2400 pixels/inch to fully resolve. The resulting 10,000 x 6,000 pixel file could then be losslessly printed to a size of 20 by 30 inches without further digital enhancement.

 

However, the CDV paper texture may show up under flatbed scanner lighting. A better result might be got from drum scanning or from copying with a digital camera using stitching to increase the resolution. But whatever digitizing method is used, my experience is that a 2400 ppi reproduction would be plenty, and verging on overkill.

So people have offered solutions to different pieces of the OP 's questions. Has any of this helped the OP? GS?

So people have offered solutions to different pieces of the OP 's questions. Has any of this helped the OP? GS?

 

If the information provided by Photo.net is correct, GS hasn't been seen on the site under that name/membership since the day after the original post was made and has certainly not made further posts. If so they will not have seen any of the responses. Possible I guess that he/she has visited under another name?

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