I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no such thing as free photo restoration. As with almost everything else, you either pay with your money or your time. Good thing is, it isn’t hard to restore your old photos, and it certainly doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Compared to hiring a professional you can save hundreds, even thousands of dollars, by repairing and retouching them yourself(and still get great results).
How Much Professionals Charge
Most photo restoration services start at prices ranging from $10 to $40 per picture, and that’s only for minor repair and adjustments that often take no more than 5 minutes to correct(even for a beginner). That means you’re paying someone $120 to $480 an hour to fix your photos. If you have more than one photo you want restored, you can imagine the price will quickly add upp with that hourly rate. If you want your black and white photos colorized, expect an average price of another $40 per picture. If your photo has medium to major damage a common starting price is around $60 to $80. Of course a major restoration will take more than 5 minutes so you’ll get more “bang for your buck” in those cases, but even then you can save a lot of money by doing it yourself. It might sound like I’m putting professional photo restorers down, but I’m not. I’ve seen some restorations that are truly amazing, but I’ve also seen many that anyone could easily do with just a few minutes of training.
Do It Yourself Costs
Free Photo Restoration
You need a few things before you can start restoring your photos, but it doesn’t necessarily have to cost anything. What you need are: a computer (which you have if you’re reading this article), a photo restoration software (which you can get for free), and the knowledge to use that software (which I will teach you). You also need to get your pictures from your album or slides onto your computer, so you either need a photo scanner or you can let a photo scanning service do the job for you. If you already have your photos on your computer, you can basically restore your own photos without cost. Nice!
Not only can you save your hard earned cash by restoring your photos yourself, you also get the satisfaction and freedom of having that knowledge.
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