Old College Pictures

More Photo Restorations

I have some old historic photos from Randolph Macon Woman's College where I taught for most of my career. It was fun to colorize and enhance scenes from more than a hundred years ago. For example, here's a restored image of the 1897 graduating class.

The next animation shows stages of restoration from the original damaged black and white photo to the final enhanced colorized product.

Final restoration quality depends on original source photo quality. Sometimes the original is slightly out of focus, or the scan into digital form isn't very good. For example, restoration of the 1901 basketball team picture didn't turn out as well as the 1897 image above. Faces seem fuzzier, and smudges on the original aren't completely removed.

Here's the restoration animation.

This picture, showing an art class of the same era, was also a bit fuzzy.

The restoration animation shows blemish removal.The next colorized photo shows the original college faculty. William Waugh Smith, the college's founder, is front and center. The college science building is named after Fernando Wood Martin who is the second man to the right of Smith.

The original small college observatory, Winfree Observatory, was located on the front of campus approximately where Smith Hall is located today.

Later, in 1923, Winfree Observatory was moved to its present location. This colorized picture from 1954 shows the original 6-inch Brashear refractor on its original metal pier containing a mechanical clock drive.

Color really brings old photos to life!