Formats
Tintype restoration
A tintype is a direct positive on a thin sheet of lacquered iron, cheap, quick and tough enough to mail home. Most Civil War soldier portraits and a great many fairground pictures were made this way.
The lacquer crazes, the plate rusts inward from the edges, the varnish yellows and any bend leaves a permanent crease in the metal. Handle the tintype by its edges, scan it once at a high resolution, and do the repair on the file rather than the object.
Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration is the first tool to run on a tintype; it is written for this material and keeps the output at the shape of the upload. Chain Face Restoration and the upscaler in the Studio if the tintype is going to be reprinted.
Original on the left, restored on the right; hover to see more of the repair. Made in the Studio from a scan of the print.
Print and file requirements
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Years in use | 1856 to about 1900; fairground tintypes into the 1930s |
| Typical size | Sixth-plate 2.75 x 3.25 in; gem tintypes under 1 in |
| Process | Wet collodion direct positive on japanned iron |
| Appearance | Dark, low contrast, laterally reversed, often with hand-tinted cheeks |
| How it fails | Rust, crazed varnish, flaking, bent plate |
| Scan tip | Photograph at a slight angle to avoid reflections, or scan with the lid open |
What matters for these photos
- Rust, crazed varnish, flaking, bent plate on a tintype
- A tintype scanned once, badly, and never touched again
- Faces on a tintype that are too small or too soft to enlarge
- A reprint of the tintype for a frame, needing more pixels than the scan has
Suggested order of passes
- 01
Run Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration on the tintype
Written for the way a tintype fails: rust, crazed varnish, flaking, bent plate.
Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration - 02
Clean up the tintype scan
Removes scanner dust, borders and the color cast a flatbed adds to a tintype, and straightens it.
Scan Cleanup - 03
Restore the faces on the tintype
Recovers eye and skin detail at natural strength; small faces on a tintype are plausible reconstructions.
Face Restoration - 04
Upscale the tintype for reprinting
A tintype is small to begin with; the upscaler adds the pixels a frame-sized print needs.
Image Upscaler
Questions
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