I have a poster-size (24x36") blowup of a photograph that has aged considerably. It has browned and the paper has gotten quite fragile. I’m not interested in a restoration of the original color. I just want to make a more stable copy before it degrades further, but I haven’t been able to locate any local firms which would provide this service.
I talked to a couple of local photographic service shops, but they basically said “no” in words that seemed designed to conceal their incompetence. Would a photographer be able to take a picture of the poster and reproduce it at reasonable resolution?
There is a local company that advertises this service for old photos. They use a scanner and high-quality color printer, but they use a flatbed scanner too small to handle this in one pass. They say they could scan in sections and stitch an image together in Photoshop, but I’m concerned about moving the fragile paper over a small scanner. Can a scanner get a good image if I leave the photo in its frame with the glass? I expect this would work since the scanner is imaging through its own glass, but are reflections from the interface a problem?
Note, copyrights are not an issue with this image.
Yes. A reasonably competent photo lab or photographer should be able to make high-quality reporductions of your images. Just find a high-quality photo lab in your area, and they should be able to accomodate you.
If you have access to a reasonably high megapixel camera, that may give acceptable results without removing it from the frame. Just use a tripod and good even lighting.
Depending on the detail of the poster you may be very unhappy with the results from typical “high resolution” consumer digicams. I’d suggest finding someone with at least a medium format film camera to shoot some chromes and have those drum scanned if you want to go digital.