Photo Enhancement, Retouching

Although the major emphasis of our service is restoring photos to their original condition, it is also often possible to make a photo better than the original.

Apart from restoring photos to their original state, it is possible to enhance photos to provide entirely new effects. Here, Grandpa's neck has more wrinkles than he would like, and there is a distracting background. A photo improvement like this - cropping, a little cosmetic surgery, and adding a vignette - would cost about £10.

(Incidentally, that's John B, your PhotoValet editor-in-chief - with his first grandson peeping over his shoulder.)

Photo enhancement can help in many different ways. If a family has their sons, their wives and the grandchildren living in two different countries, it is hard to get a photo of the whole family. The answer can be to take a good photo of each family and then join them together in a new photo. The opportunity can even be taken to remove someone who is not part of the family. And of course, marks on the background or damage to either of the photos can be corrected at the same time. A job like this would probably cost about £40.

And portraits of course aren't always of people. A well-loved family pet deserves a place on the wall. This enhancement was tricky because of the need to create carpet. The cost was £25.

One of those holiday photos that can be improved: cropped, lightened, colours corrected and sky tidied up a bit. Estimated cost: £8.

A very ordinary photo can be turned  into an interesting watercolour or oil portrait. And it will look especially good if printed on canvas.  Estimated Cost: £40 A marvelous surprise present for Christmas, a Birthday or Mother's/Father's Day.