Project brings new life to downtown heritage image

For those in downtown Fergus last week, it was a chance to see history in the making - so to speak.

Theo Stork of LayCom signs was at work replacing the weathered image of the historic downtown.

And in doing so, he’s helped bring new details to light. Stork noted the new photo is one-quarter the weight of the old sign.

The previous sign had the image backed onto a wood base, while the new sign is a thin material stretched onto a lighter framework.

There are no screws in the face of the new photo, which can be placed directly onto the stone wall.

“You don’t see any screws at all. You don’t want to see a nice picture like this all screwed up,” Stork quipped.

He noted the new image is roughly 35 million pixels and estimated the new photo took about a week to create.

He explained the process made the image more black and white. Work was also done to enhance the sign names in the photo.

Stork said the signs were not readable in the older image, but they are now. The same holds true for images of the buildings and the people on the street.

“We made it way sharper so you can really see the detail of the street parade,” he said.

The image has UV protection on the front. A two millimetre seal also protects the image from the weather.