Rescuing my honeymoon photos

Do you want to hear something funny?  I bought a brand new Olympus camera a month or so before my wedding, because I wanted a nicer camera for the wedding day and our honeymoon. Three days into the honeymoon the XD card I had purchased for my new camera was full. My darling husband suggested he dump the photos onto his laptop when I said I needed to buy a new memory card. He did so that evening, but instead of copying the one thousand and eight photos to his hard drive; he loaded the actual photos onto a thumb drive.  When we got back from the honeymoon; we believe he took that thumb drive and deleted all the photos because he needed to put some stuff on that drive. For years, I've referred to these as the "lost photos".  The 1008 photos cover a few test shots, all the set up/decorating photos for the wedding, Thanksgiving dinner (which was also our rehearsal dinner), the photos I took on our wedding day (don't fret too much we had an excellent professional photographer) and the first three days of our honeymoon. No biggie. 

When I asked for my photos all he could come up with were the iPhoto thumbnails from his Macbook hard drive. As an aside, this story gets funnier. At this point he decided to transfer all the other photos from my camera as well as his camera to my iMac. He plugged a camera in and walked away.  My iMac apparently went into a kernel panic and when he came back hours later–the drive was gone. (Don't fret too much, we were able to rescue everything but my email with some amazing software.)

Thumbnails, in case you are curious, are 72 dpi, 5" x 3 1/4" photos. I spent a  lot of time figuring out if I could somehow magically enlarge those thumbnails; spent some time playing around with 12" x 12" layouts full of postage stamp photos and I spent some time reminding my husband that he owed me a second honeymoon so I could re-take some of the lost photos.

Recently, I was preparing to save a file for the web in PS CS5 and as I scrolled through the Resample Image select box on my way to "Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction)" for the first time I really noticed that right above that was "Bicubic Smoother (best for enlargements)" and I thought "Hmm; can I enlarge my lost photos?"

I've made a few layouts with my lost photos, but I haven't printed any yet.  I think the photos will have to be kept at about 3" x 5"and they may be a little fuzzy; but now making scrapbook pages with the "lost photos" is a real possibility.  But I will never be able to print out the Disney Castle at 16" X 20" and hang it on my wall.

I made this layout for a reflection challenge at Oscraps.  I had to use software to reflect the photo for the challenge. In this layout the photo is blended, which certainly helps with the fuzziness. 

Wishes and Dreams
At Last by Vicki Stegall
Fonts: Porcelein and Century Gothic

This was actually my second attempt layout for that challenge.  My first was a two-pager with a lot of lost photos. All the photos on the left hand side have been rescued with Photoshop. The center photo on the left has also been rescued with photoshop, but the remaining photos on the left are Disney Photopass photos. (If you ever go to Disney World, take a lot of Photopass photos and just buy the CD before you leave.)  This will be printed and placed in my album and then I really know how well the enlargement worked.

(click on image for larger version)
Wishes and Dreams
At Last by Vicki Stegall
Crossed staples from It's only Natural by Vicki Stegall
Fonts: Porcelein and Century Gothic

By this point I was on a Disney Castle roll.  Using Photoshop to make false reflections was sad because I had worked really hard on getting a good photo of that castle reflected in the water below.  After all, I was planning on printing a super large copy on canvas and hanging it on my wall.  This is a layout I made for a color challenge at GingerScrips with my favorite reflected photo of the castle:

Anything Your Heart Desires

Papers and elements from New Beginnings by Harmony Star

Elements from Neutralized by Craft-tastrophic

Fonts: Century Gothic and Garamond

And by this point, you readers can fully appreciate the humor in the last line of that journaling. I am sure that we will someday go back to the Magic Kingdom to celebrate an anniversary, because he owes me! I need that castle photo on my wall!