Signature on photo needs ink restoration

[artlover]

I would like to hear thoughts about restoring the signature on a photo.
The photo is in excellent shape but the signature has faded. In order to maintain the authenticity of the photo and the faded signature, would it be
best to make a copy of the photo and restore that and keep the original in
the faded state? The value is not great, but it does have value. Mostly I do
not want to make an error and render it valueless.

The second part is if I choose to restore the original, are there professional
restoration people that work specifically with ink? Any leads?

Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts.

[JoReam]

Re: Signature on photo needs ink restoration

Hi
I scan and digitally restore photos. I would be tempted to copy the original and work on a digital copy and place the original in appropriate archive storage. I have restored old photos that have a photographers signature on them and I have also worked on documents - currently I am restoring a marriage certificate. As part of the history of the photo is the photographers signature I have digitally restored that as well as the photo. The techniques I have used are similar to those you might use with a faded photo - either using something like a multiply blending layer or perhaps the burn tool. Sometimes I have sampled some of the colour of the signature and used that to recolour the signature by very carefully going over it on another layer (this later technique has to be done at a very small scale and requires a tablet to get the best results).

You could of course physically restore the photo but you would need to contact a conservator who specialises in photorestoration - they would then be able to advise you as to whether or not you should restore the original and outline the options.

Hope that helps

[0lBaldy]

Re: Signature on photo needs ink restoration

artlover, Welcome to RetouchPRO
Hope you enjoy your stay here and make lots of friends.
Poke around, have fun!
Always keep the original and work on high resolution copies in this case the deconvolution plug-in. @ http://4n6site.com/ might be worth looking into.