Map restoration...



I was asked by a family friend if I could photograph a map for him with very little details on what the job would entail. When I arrived I found the map was made from a banner like material but pre-nylon. The map had also been folded several times and in the creased areas some of the map had worn and also there were area where the colour had changed due to mould starting to form.



After realising that this wouldn't be a straight forward job ie simply taking a photograph of it I suggested that, depending on how important the job was that they maybe enquire about specialist scanning of the object. This would potentially be far more accurate. I think as part of professional practise it is sometimes more professional to know when to let the job go. This could take up quite a lot of time and I wouldn't necessarily do the job justice.
My friend wasn't willing to go to those lengths with the map and another friend of theirs had said they would retouch to photo once I had taken it.
Me, having a chip on my shoulder saw this as a challenge to take on in my spare time. My thinking was that I wanted to test my photoshop skills against theirs and if it turned out to be good then it would be another thing to add to my skillset.



My thoughts on how to achieve this restoration shifted quickly, my initial idea was to use the spot healing tool in conjunction with the clone stamp to remove all the blemished but this would be a insanely big task and still be all that accurate. Areas of white still wouldn't match and it would be difficult to not effect the lines of the map.
I soon realised there was a much more efficient way to work which utilises layers.



I begin to retrace the map on a new layer and also created separate layers for red areas blue areas, blue lines. This way I was working in a non destructive way which allowed me to make amendments to separate features of the map.



I have not finished the project yet as it is something I am doing in my own spare time for personal gratification. I did test my final idea to simply place white layer underneath which in effect will create a fresh digital recreation of the original map. The map will be available to both print and access digitally. As with other things I have attempted with photoshop I believe it is good to add new skills all the time giving me a bigger variety of income options within the creative industry.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Moving image...

Fonts and Typeface

Introduction to InDesign...