I’ve been experimenting with photo restoration and colourisation using the neural filters in Adobe Photoshop.
I like the patina of old photographs but the sepia-toned world that they evoke can put a bit of a barrier between us and them.
Besides, working on the images on the 27 inch screen of my iMac brings out details that I might miss in the original. The ‘neural filter’ seems to favour blue as the main colour for clothes. My guess is that there was more colour about.
It’s freshens up the scratchy surface of this photograph of Mr and Mrs Baines with friends. Are the two women sisters? No names on the back, just a pencilled ’33’. It’s possible that they are relatives of the Radley or Naylor families of Horbury. The family portrait and – as far as I remember – this walking group, were given to me by Mrs Nora Naylor, nee Radley, of Cooperative Street, Horbury.
For a while, the Baines family ran this shop, demolished in the early 1960s, next to St Peter’s Church. Ann North lent me the much-blemished photograph and I’ve colourised this version from my print of it.
Primitive Methodist School Feast, 1906
Again, the original of this postcard is black and white. William appears, aged 6 or 7, possibly the boy in the flat cap in the bottom left corner.
Thanks to ridiculously high res scan of the original – 2400 dpi! – I can zoom in on a small area to reveal long-gone shops.
