Industry
Restoration is actually three different jobs wearing one name
Three different jobs go by the name restoration. Knowing which one you want, and learning the vocabulary for damage, decides everything that follows.
What to take away
- Three separate jobs share the word restorationdigital retouching, conservation treatment, and stabilization.
- Only one of them touches the original, and it is the one that needs a trained conservator.
- Learn the vocabulary for damage before asking for a quote. Precise words get precise answers.
- No services are named here. None were assessed, so a watchlist would be invention.
Why there is no watchlist
The headline this page was generated under promised a watchlist of restoration services. Compiling one would mean recommending businesses that were never contacted or assessed, and the field turns over quickly. What is durable is the distinction between the jobs, and the language for describing what is wrong.
The three jobs
What it touches
- Digital retouching
- A scan; the original is untouched
- Conservation treatment
- The original object
- Stabilization and rehousing
- The original, minimally
Who does it
- Digital retouching
- A studio, or you
- Conservation treatment
- A trained conservator only
- Stabilization and rehousing
- You, or a conservator
Most people who say they want restoration want the first. They want a clean copy of a torn photograph, to print and give to relatives. That is a file job, and the original comes back exactly as it went out.
Three Restoration Jobs Compared
Digital retouching
- What it touches
- A scan only
- Who does it
- A studio, or you
- Reversible
- Yes, original untouched
- Cost
- Low
- Most requested
- Yes, most people
Conservation treatment
- What it touches
- The original object
- Who does it
- A trained conservator
- Reversible
- No, changes object
- Cost
- High
- Most requested
- Less common
Stabilization and rehousing
- What it touches
- The original, minimally
- Who does it
- You, or a conservator
- Reversible
- Yes, minimal change
- Cost
- Cheap
- Most requested
- Often skipped
The second is different work with different risks and a different price. It changes the object, and it is not reversible in the sense that scanning is.
The third is the one that gets skipped and matters most: a stable enclosure, a stable room, and no further deterioration. It is cheap and it makes the other two optional.
Why the object is layered
Understanding why treatment is specialist work starts with what the object is. The Canadian Conservation Institute's note on the structure and deterioration of paintings makes the general case: paintings are complex three-dimensional structures, not merely painted surfaces.
They combine many materials in many ways. Each material's properties, and how it was used, affect the behavior of the whole, including the safest way to handle, store and display it.
Layers of a Framed Painting
- Auxiliary support (e.g., stretcher)
- Support
- Size
- Ground
- Paint layers
- Varnish
- Non-original restoration materials
- Framing (glazing, backing board)
A photograph is layered in the same way, with an image-bearing layer, a binder and a support, and sometimes a mount and a coating. Anything applied to the top layer reaches the ones underneath. That is the entire reason treatment is not a home activity.
Learn the vocabulary first
The single most useful preparation before contacting anyone is learning to describe damage precisely. The Canadian Conservation Institute publishes a glossary of condition reporting terms explaining the terminology conservators use in condition reports, intended to help people write and maintain accurate records.
Its treatment of cracks alone shows why this matters. It distinguishes concentric cracks, drying cracks, feather cracks, mechanical cracks, spiral cracks and diagonal cracks, and relates them to features such as stretcher marks. Those are not synonyms. Each points at a different cause and a different prognosis.
You do not need to master it. You need enough of it to write a description a specialist can act on without seeing the object.
Our guide to what actually damages a home archive covers the causes behind those terms, and the plan for a photograph collection covers the stabilization work that comes first.
Common questions
Is digital restoration cheating?
Should I have the original repaired as well?
Can a studio do both?
What if the photograph is already in pieces?
In this guide
- Photo restoration first steps when something is water damaged: the parts worth your timeWater damage develops over minutes to hours, and simple air drying is often wrong. The emergency sequence, and how to get a wet item out of its frame safely.
- 4 things to check in photo restoration servicesWhat to specify when you have new prints made from family photographs, and how to identify a glass plate before anybody scans, cleans or handles it.
- Specifying a restoration job well is what makes quotes comparableCommissioning restoration work, and what to ask before the price: how to specify a job so quotes are comparable, the questions professionals ask vendors.
- Packing a photograph for restoration takes five careful stepsPreparing an original to leave the house: sending a family item to a studio is the riskiest hour of its life. What to check before it travels, how to pack it.
- Which questions actually separate a restoration specialist from a reseller?A reseller quotes a rate and sends the work out. A restoration specialist names the formats they run in house and the equipment that reads them.
