Should I press it flat before scanning?

Only if it goes down willingly. Weight applied slowly is safe on a supple print and ruinous on a dry one, and the scan can be taken today either way.

The crease runs straight through a face.

That is the case this page exists for. Where the emulsion is cracked, the detail either side carries across it; where it has gone altogether, we leave it rather than invent a cheekbone.

Can the worn corners go too?

They can, along with the rubbed edges and the sheen. Corner wear is dealt with in the same pass and needs no separate tap.

Mend a creased photograph

A crease is a shadow and a break at once. The fold catches the light along one edge and holds a dark valley along the other, and wherever the paper was bent hard the emulsion has cracked and taken a thread of the picture with it.

Wallet photographs come off worst: one hard fold, four soft corners, and a general sheen across the middle from decades against a lining.

Pressing the print under books helps the paper and does nothing for the crack, and the crack is the part that shows up in a scan.

Mend one photograph, free What a pack costs

What fills a gap in a damaged photograph is our best guess, not what was there.

A sepia photograph of an early aeroplane above a river bluff, a hard vertical fold down its middle — A single hard fold down the middle of the print, and a lifetime of handling around it. It flattens out, and the worn corners are square once more.

The same photograph, the fold flattened and the rubbed corners made good — A single hard fold down the middle of the print, and a lifetime of handling around it. It flattens out, and the worn corners are square once more.

What comes back

The pale ridge and dark valley of a fold, taken back to unbroken tone.
Cracked emulsion along a hard crease, filled by carrying detail across from either side of the break.
The soft bowing of tone beside a fold, which is what leaves a half-mended crease still visible.
Rounded corners and the polished surface of a photograph that lived in a wallet.

What never comes back

A crease that has torn through. Once a fold becomes a split it is a tear, which we also mend — on its own page, with its own limits.
A face where a hard crease has taken the emulsion away rather than merely cracked it. Something crosses that line, and it is a guess about a face assembled from the two halves.
Flattening the paper. We mend the scan; the print stays as creased as it ever was.

What fills a gap in a damaged photograph is our best guess, not what was there.

Three of these, mended

A close monochrome portrait of a young woman in a feathered hat, scratched and specked throughout — Fine scratches and specks over the whole surface, with edges worn ragged. They clean away, and the hat and its feather come through as they were.

The same portrait, scratches and specks cleared from the surface — Fine scratches and specks over the whole surface, with edges worn ragged. They clean away, and the hat and its feather come through as they were.

The same portrait cleaned, the face smoothed and a little redrawn — Scratches and specks over a three-quarter profile. They lift away, and the face is smoothed while they go — look at the mouth and the eye before calling this a clean win.

Before you flatten it

A supple print can be relaxed under weight over several days between clean sheets of paper. A dry one cracks the moment it is pressed, and a print with cracked emulsion sheds flakes every time it moves. Scan first and decide afterwards; the guide below is how to tell brittle from merely bent.

Handling a brittle photograph

Questions about this sort of damage

Should I press it flat before scanning?: Only if it goes down willingly. Weight applied slowly is safe on a supple print and ruinous on a dry one, and the scan can be taken today either way.
The crease runs straight through a face.: That is the case this page exists for. Where the emulsion is cracked, the detail either side carries across it; where it has gone altogether, we leave it rather than invent a cheekbone.
Can the worn corners go too?: They can, along with the rubbed edges and the sheen. Corner wear is dealt with in the same pass and needs no separate tap.

Try it on yours

One photograph, mended, free, with no card. Send this exact sort of damage and see the result before spending anything.

Mend one photograph, free

If it doesn't look like the person you remember, you don't pay.

Other sorts of damage