Does Kumbaa restore photos?
No, and we'd rather say so plainly. Kumbaa doesn't repair scratches, fill in tears or colourise photos. What it does is keep a restored photo together with the original scan it came from, so the family sees both.
You might have restored a photo yourself in an editing app, or paid someone to do it, or a cousin did it years ago. Either way, the restored version is the one people want to look at, and the original is the one that's true to what survived. Kumbaa keeps both.
How does the before/after slider work?
When a photo has its un-restored scan attached, the full-screen viewer shows a slider. Drag it across and the restored photo gives way to the original underneath, so you can see exactly what was mended.
There are two ways to attach the original:
- Open the photo in Curate and add the un-restored scan to it.
- Upload both at once, naming the scan like the restored photo with "-original" on the end. For example,
wedding-1956.jpgandwedding-1956-original.jpg. Kumbaa pairs them automatically.
What can I fix in Kumbaa itself?
The everyday fixes that most scans need. In Curate, a curator can rotate a photo that went in sideways, crop away the scanner lid and the album page around it, and re-tone it when the colours have faded or the scan came out too dark. Then caption it, give it a date and place, and file it in an album.
Why keep the original at all?
Restoration involves choices. A restorer guesses at what was under a stain, or what colour a dress was. Those guesses can be good, and they're still guesses. Keeping the original means nobody has to wonder later what was real. It also means a better restoration can be made from it one day.
Everyone can download the original file of any photo, or a whole album as a zip, so the family isn't stuck with one copy in one place.
Getting good scans first
A restoration is only as good as the scan behind it. Our guide on how to digitize family photos covers resolution, file formats and phone scanning apps. Once the photos are in, name the faces so each one shows up on the right people's pages, and see organizing family photos for keeping it all in order.