This was a badly faded colour portrait produced approximately 40 years ago
Restoring a faded Colour Portrait
The process of restoring a faded color portrait is very time consuming and difficult to explain to a client.
On the job above I made many false starts and had to get feedback from my client at each step in the process.
First off, with a colour portrait..there is no information as to what the colours in the original photograph actually were.
The client already has an emotional attachment to an image…and now you are going to turn it into something that often bears little resemblance to how the client remembers the image.
The process can be very emotionally charged. I find it best to sit down with my client with the nearly finished piece and give her some options.
The client can then see the work involved and can approve some changes on- the- fly before a final print is produced.
The final result will often have far more impact than even the original portrait.
The proof is in that little ” tear drop” that the client sheds, when she see the final piece of artwork !
