Ferrotype Help

[D Harrelson]

In the past few days, my brother and I were going through some old family photos and newspaper clippings when we ran across a 1/6th plate ferrotype of our great-grandgather, who was a lieutenant in the 20th/59th Virginia Infantry IN UNIFORM!! Obviously from his dates of service and the locations which he served, I would suspect that this was taken sometime between June and October 1861. The problem is, as with many ferrotypes, it is too dark to discern much detail.
Can anyone give me direction on how this may be digitalized to bring out the clarity of the photo so that I may get a little more insight as to the details of his uniform, etc? If you have any info on sources who do this or are familiar with doing so on a basic computer/printer set-up, it would be greatly appreciated. You may PM me or post on this thread.

Thanks for any help.

Don Harrelson

[sam H]

Re: Ferrotype Help

yeah, I am pretty your old eyes cant see much of anything in that picture. sincerely
your boon compainion,

Sam Harrelson
old and white mess

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Ferrotype Help

Scan it at the highest resolution you can manage, then bring up the scan in a good photo editor. We've used Paint Shop Pro for years, but some prefer Photoshop, others one of the many other good ones. PSP has an auto-adjust feature for contrast/brightness/saturation, but you will still need to play with all of the settings.

Also important: DO NOT save the altered image to the same file as your scan. Use "Save as" and give the file a name like "Grandpa version 2" or what have you. Sometimes the changes don't work and if you happen to get a stubborn program it may crash on you. If you have an original saved, you won't have to worry about it.

[Bruce Schultz]

Re: Ferrotype Help

Also make sure you use a high dpi setting. 1500 dpi will give you a great rendering, but 2400 could be even better. Be prepared for huge files, possibly more than 20 megabytes.
Be aware that scanning a varnished image such as yours probably is will result in numerous artifacts, such as dust spots,
You may try cleaning it with a wet cotton ball. What appears as darkness may just be a buildup of soot and crud over the decades. Make a test swipe on a bottom corner and see if that helps it. It wouldn't have survived this long if it didn't have a varnish protective coat of varnish.
A photo restorer may be able to bring out the image by removing the old varnish and replacing it.
Good luck.

[Rear Guard]

Re: Ferrotype Help

If your scanner has controls for exposure, you may want to lighten the scan initially to dig out more details in the murk. If you then open your scanned image in Photoshop, there is an "Adjust Levels" option in the menu. clicking on "Auto" in the dialog box will automatically set the white and black points in the image and adjust the tonal range in accordance. You may not want this much contrast, but it will give you the best look at the details in the image. "Unsharp Mask" and "Sharpen Edges" will help too. If you want to send me a jpeg of your scanned image, I can help you with it.