The damage we mend
Eight sorts of damage, each with a page of its own, its own comparisons, and a plain account of what is recovered and what is filled in for you.
Most damaged prints have more than one thing wrong with them, and you need not work out which page yours belongs on. The mend looks at the whole photograph, and saying what is wrong only tells us what to deal with first.
If none of these quite fits, send it anyway. The default mends whatever is damaged and alters nothing else.
By sort of damage
- Torn photographsA split across the middle, a tear along an old fold, a corner come away.
- Water damageTide marks, blooms, violet staining and prints that dried in a block.
- Faded photographsColour drifted to orange, and monochrome gone the shade of weak tea.
- Mould and foxingSpeckling, rust-coloured spotting and the bloom of a damp cupboard.
- Stuck to glassA framed print bonded to its glass, and what not to do about it.
- Creases and foldsThe wallet fold, the drawer crease, and the cracked line along both.
- Scratches and silveringHairline scratches, trodden-in dust and the mirror sheen of old silver.
- Missing piecesCorners gone, edges chewed, a piece torn out and never found again.
Looking after the print itself
Four guides about the object rather than the file: scanning it, handling it once it has gone brittle, what a conservator can do that we cannot, and where film survives.
- Scanning old photographs
The resolution that is enough, the file to keep, and when a phone will serve.
- Handling brittle photographs
Moving a print that has gone dry, curled, cracked or into pieces.
- What a hand restorer does
Bench work no software can do, what it costs, and how to find someone good.
- Storing negatives and slides
Where film survives in a British house, and the plastic that ruins it.
Before you decide
How this compares with a studio, with the free websites and with doing it yourself — written to be useful even where the answer is somebody else.
- Restoration services compared
High-street studios, freelance retouchers and pack-priced mending, weighed up.
- Free mending tools
What the free sites do well, where they come unstuck, and how to test it.
- Doing it yourself
What mending a print by hand really takes, and when it is the better use of an evening.
Not sure which yours is?
Send it and find out for nothing. One photograph, mended, no card, and an answer within a few minutes.
Mend one photograph, freeWhat fills a gap in a damaged photograph is our best guess, not what was there.