Old Photo Repair... Is there any money in it?

So, my cousin asked me to scan and repair some old tin type photos of my uncles family and I found it very simple to do (Photoshop has gotten SOOOOOOO slick over the years).

Anyway, a thought came to mind about doing that as a side business. I didn't keep any of the original scans or processed photos but they were in pretty bad shape as they were from the late 1800's.

Do people still look for others to edit old photos and make them presentable again? I guess in some respects they do since my cousin asked me to do some.

What do you all think?

It seems to be quite popular and a lot of websites propose it already

http://www.scancafe.co​m/services/photo-restoration
https://www.google.com …f-8#q=+photos+restoratio​n

Interestingly enough, looking at those websites makes me think they took a digital image and made them look like old torn/broken photographs. Especially these...

http://www.phojoe.com …ew/restoration/​Gary-A.jpg
http://www.phojoe.com …estoration/Kath​leen-M.jpg

But I am still pondering doing this for side work.

Fakers are and will be always around

You might need to master this software too Fiji or ImageJ2 specially to remove patterns and other thing you cannot on Photoshop or spend hours on Photoshop when with ImageJ2 or Fiji it will take few minutes only with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) for example

Take a look here >> https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=14938384
And here too >> http://retouchpro.com/​tutorials/?m=show&id=1​85

I do a couple every year, charge $25-40 per hour depending on how difficult it is.

finally visited a local guy that makes a living doing it, been meaning to stop in for years.

He used to be a commercial photog but the restoration part just took over (as commercial died) and he has just gone with it. My sense is that his location on a busy downtown street is key to grabbing new customers.


He is definitely busy though.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #17782879
finally visited a local guy that makes a living doing it, been meaning to stop in for years.

He used to be a commercial photog but the restoration part just took over (as commercial died) and he has just gone with it. My sense is that his location on a busy downtown street is key to grabbing new customers.


He is definitely busy though.

I agree, specially for local work location is the key for any kind of jobs