Will you colourise a black-and-white photograph?

No. Every colour in a colourised print is a guess about somebody we never met, and guessing is the one thing this business is built not to do. We mend the damage and leave the photograph as the kind of photograph it is.

Mine is faded and stained together. Which page applies?

Either of them. The mend looks at the whole photograph, and the tap you choose only says which fault to lead with, so a print with both is seen to in a single pass.

Will the colours be the right ones?

They will be plausible rather than certain. Where a dye has gone entirely its exact value cannot be known, so we work towards the tones the film and paper of that period actually produced.

Mend a faded photograph

Two quite different failures share the word. A colour print loses its cyan dye first, so the whole thing drifts orange and the shadows go red. A monochrome print has no colour to lose, so what goes is the contrast — and the paper yellows around what is left.

Daylight does most of the harm. A photograph that spent thirty years on a wall facing the window has had thirty years of it, and the strip the mount covered is usually still there to prove the point.

Bringing it back is a judgement rather than a slider. Skin has to return as skin and not as a fortnight in Spain, and a photograph taken in 1968 ought to look as though it was.

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 colour photograph of two dogs behind a lattice screen door, stained and shifted to magenta — A magenta cast over two dogs behind a screen door. The cast has gone and so has everything else: this one came back monochrome, which is a loss rather than a mend.

The same photograph returned monochrome, the magenta cast and the rest of the colour gone with it — A magenta cast over two dogs behind a screen door. The cast has gone and so has everything else: this one came back monochrome, which is a loss rather than a mend.

What comes back

The orange and magenta drift of a faded colour print, corrected to muted tones the film of the day could actually have given.
The yellowing of an old monochrome print, and the flat grey standing in for its blacks.
Density and contrast across the whole frame, from a proper black in the shadows to clean white in the highlights.
The hard edge where a mount or frame protected part of the print while the rest went on fading.

What never comes back

Colour that was never on the paper. A monochrome photograph stays monochrome with us; colourisation is a different trade and we do not practise it.
Detail faded past the point of recovery. Where a highlight has gone to bare paper there is nothing in it to read, and what appears there afterwards has been drawn rather than uncovered.
Making it look as though it were taken last week. The aim is the photograph as it was, not as a telephone would have had it.

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

Three of these, mended

A colour photograph of a beach and a large tank, faded overall to pink — Faded through to pink, sky and sand alike. The colour returns, and the lettering on the tank survives it word for word.

The same photograph, sky blue and sand natural again, the warning lettering untouched — Faded through to pink, sky and sand alike. The colour returns, and the lettering on the tank survives it word for word.

A yellowed monochrome portrait with hardly any contrast remaining — Monochrome, gone the colour of weak tea. It comes back monochrome, because that is what it has always been.

The same portrait, its blacks and whites recovered, monochrome still — Monochrome, gone the colour of weak tea. It comes back monochrome, because that is what it has always been.

What caused it, and what to do about the rest

Light first, then warmth, then damp. The photographs still in the box are the ones you can do something about today, and negatives and slides fade the same way for the same reasons while being far easier to keep properly. The guide below is what to do with the ones you have not lost yet.

Storing negatives and slides

Questions about this sort of damage

Will you colourise a black-and-white photograph?: No. Every colour in a colourised print is a guess about somebody we never met, and guessing is the one thing this business is built not to do. We mend the damage and leave the photograph as the kind of photograph it is.
Mine is faded and stained together. Which page applies?: Either of them. The mend looks at the whole photograph, and the tap you choose only says which fault to lead with, so a print with both is seen to in a single pass.
Will the colours be the right ones?: They will be plausible rather than certain. Where a dye has gone entirely its exact value cannot be known, so we work towards the tones the film and paper of that period actually produced.

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