Colourising a wartime
service photograph.
A grandson sent us his grandfather's 1944 Royal Navy portrait — heavy fade, two diagonal creases, the lower-right corner gone. He asked us to colourise. Here's what we changed, what we left, and why.
The intake note read: "He served on HMS Black Prince from 1943 to 1946. He died last year at 99. We have one photograph of him in uniform. I'm giving this to my mother — his daughter — for her 75th."
A working file note for the studio. We thought it might be useful to share what restoration of a photograph like this involves, what we chose to change, and what we chose to leave.
The damage we could see.
- Heavy yellowing across the whole image (acid migration from album backing)
- Two long diagonal creases running through the chest of the uniform
- A missing corner, roughly 4cm × 5cm, on the lower right
- Foxing — small orange-brown spots — across the lower-left third
- Mild contrast loss in shadows
What we fixed.
- Removed the yellowing. Returned the white of the cap to white, the navy of the jacket to a deep ink-blue (not electric).
- Reconstructed the two diagonal creases. The underlying detail — the cut of the lapel, the buttons — was inferable from the rest of the uniform.
- Rebuilt the missing corner. The corner contained only the background and a portion of the right shoulder; nothing identity-critical was lost. We used the rest of the uniform as the reference.
- Cleared the foxing. Spot-by-spot, manually, in Affinity Photo — the AI tools wanted to smooth the surrounding skin tone too aggressively, so we did this by hand.
- Recovered the shadow detail in the cap and the right side of his face.
What we left.
- A small mole on his left jawline. The intake note mentioned his daughter "always pointed to that mark." Identity-critical. Stays.
- A slight squint in his left eye. The AI tool wanted to "correct" this; we recognised it as a feature, not an artefact, and left it.
- A barely-visible smudge of what looked like ink on the right cuff. Possibly his — possibly the photographer's. We left it; the family can identify it better than we can.
On the colourisation.
Royal Navy uniform colours from the war period are well-documented. The navy-blue serge, the white cap cover, the gold buttons (rather than silver in this period), the red identification stripe on the shoulder if present. We checked references against the Imperial War Museum photographic archive before colourising.
For his eyes, the family knew the answer: blue, like his daughter's. For skin tone, we matched the warm tones common in restored portraits from the period — neither too pink nor too saturated. The aim is what a hand-tinted photograph studio would have produced in 1944, not what an Instagram filter would today.
The timeline.
Five working days from intake to the digital proof. Two days for framing through Loxley (11×14, walnut, off-white mount). One day for Royal Mail Special Delivery. The framed piece arrived on Saturday morning, two days before his daughter's 75th.
The cost.
Single Photograph (£49) + colourisation (£20) + severe damage surcharge for the missing corner (£25) + 11×14 framed print (£72) = £166 total. The grandson wrote back after the birthday to say his mother had cried.
For us, that's the work. The mathematics on the invoice and the mathematics on her mantel are different mathematics.
Published with the family's explicit written permission. If you'd like to discuss a similar project — a service photograph for a milestone or a memorial — write to hello@keptandkin.com.