All About Photo and Document Restoration

Husom & Rose Photographics is a premier provider of restoration services for photographs, documents, handwritten books and historic paper items. We use both digital and traditional means to copy damaged, rare and fragile items. With over 14 years experience using the most advanced computer technology, we can restore, enhance and correct images and documents. In fact, we have done a number of restorations that others have said could not be fixed.

Our archival printers can match the original tones of any black and white paper or produce the full color of color photographs or historic hand colored photos. Prints can be snapshot sized or large mural size enlargements. We also provide digital archiving of images, books and documents on DVDs and CD-ROMs, and can help with framing and archival storage material of the original photograph or document.

We are located in rural Pierce County in Western Wisconsin, on the Left Bank of the Mississippi River overlooking Red Wing Minnesota. We work directly with customers from Red Wing, Ellsworth, Hudson, River Falls, Stockholm, Pepin and the Minneapolis - St. Paul Twin Cities area in our studio. (Free pick up and delivery in the Metro area can be arranged). In addition we receive work from all across the country. We are experts and handling and packing valuable material.

BEWARE: Many photo restoration providers on the Web and from retail stores send your valuable photographs or documents to outside vendors in South America or India.In other cases, drug stores, camera stores and shopping mall restoration providers often will scan your work on an inexpensive flatbed scanner in the store and send just the digital file. Although this may sound safer, the problem is most of these stores do not have scanners of the necessary quality to get professional results. In other words, if they are sending out the restoration to a wholesale retoucher, they lack the skills to do the work themselves. Can you trust their scanning equipment and scanning skills?

We do all scanning, restoration and printing within the safety of our own studio using professional photo lab scanners and professional archival printers. Don't settle for drug store quality restoration when for a few dollars more you can get museum quality and archival prints.

The Bubbler (Wisconsin portal) chose us as the site of the week for our restoration work.

Call us at at: 715.792.5556
Or contact us at: annmarie@husomandrose.com

Restored Document Projects

Damaged Baptismal Certificate
Unfortunately many important family documents have not been properly stored and cared for. This seems particularly true for wedding licenses, school diplomas, birth, baptismal and confirmation certificates. However, even with the best of intentions older paper becomes brittle and the colors become dull and faded as they age. Fortunately, digital restoration can not only fix torn paper, but restore the color and detail to its original appearance.

(Rollover the image to see before and after restoration)

Restored Photograph Projects

Broken Glass Photograph
When we received this print it looked like a box of puzzle pieces. The turn of the century hand colored photograph had fallen on the floor in a glass frame. Along with breaking the glass, the fall ripped apart the image, and left shads of glass in the picture's delicate emulsion.

(Rollover the image to see before and after restoration)
Copyright Kathy Woodstra 1999

The image was carefully reassembled and chips of broken glass were delicately removed. Digital restoration included removing all the cracks and rips in the image. The color was also enhanced to it's original richness and contrast. A new large format negative was produced and enlarged to the exact dimensions of the original.

Faded Prints
The history of photographic processes is a history of improvements in the ease of making a photograph, but not necessarily the longevity of the image. Photographs from the 1950's can be more faded than ones from late 19th century. The chemicals used to produce a photograph are often the ones that cause the most damage if not washed out of print. So, we restore photographs from every decade. But it is often the older images where history comes alive when the photograph is restored that are the most fun to see. Here are two examples:

(Rollover the image to see before and after restoration)

(Rollover the image to see before and after restoration)

Contact our restoration expert at: annmarie@husomandrose.com