Could I soak it off myself?

Sometimes, with cool water and a great deal of patience, and it is a genuine gamble with an irreplaceable print. Scan it through the glass first, and then you are risking a piece of paper rather than the photograph.

The scan through the glass looks dreadful. Worth sending?

Send it and find out at no cost. Glare and haze happen to be the sort of fault that lifts well, and you will know inside a few minutes rather than after a studio has quoted you.

Would a phone photograph be better?

It is a fair second choice when the glass will not go on a scanner. Flat daylight from a window, no flash, the phone held parallel to the glass, and yourself out of the reflection.

A photograph stuck fast to its frame glass

Damp gets behind the glass, the gelatin softens, and the photograph dries onto it as though it had been stuck down. It is one of the few faults where the wrong first move cannot be undone, so this page opens with the move.

Do not pull. Where the print has bonded it is now stronger than where it has not, so pulling lifts the picture away in patches and leaves them on the glass for good.

What you can nearly always do is scan it through the glass. That gets you the photograph as a file today with nothing risked, and a scan taken through glass has its own faults — which are the ones we mend.

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 glass plate portrait of a young man, speckled with black flecks where emulsion had lifted — A plate speckled with black flecks where the emulsion had lifted. The flecks have gone and the face beneath is left alone.

The same portrait, the flecks cleared and the face untouched — A plate speckled with black flecks where the emulsion had lifted. The flecks have gone and the face beneath is left alone.

What comes back

Reflections, glare and the veiling haze a sheet of glass lays over a scan.
The dust, fingermarks and fine scratches on the glass now sitting in front of your photograph.
Newton's rings, the oily rainbow patches where print and glass touch, as far as they can be told from the picture beneath.
Whatever caused the sticking in the first place: staining, fading and mould around the edges.

What never comes back

Picture that stayed on the glass after somebody pulled. It is not in the scan and it is not coming back — and the patch does not return blank either. Something convincing is put in it.
Anything to the print itself. We work from files; freeing a bonded print is bench work for a conservator, and the guide below is candid about the cost.
Seeing through a smashed area where the shards have taken the surface with them. The mend closes it over, and what closes it is invented.

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

Three of these, mended

A glass plate photograph of an eroded hillside with a standing figure, corners darkened and a black wedge at the right edge — Darkened corners and a black wedge bitten out of the right-hand edge. Both clear, and the ground filling that wedge is the repair's own reading of the slope.

The same hillside, corners opened out and the wedge filled with slope that was never recorded — Darkened corners and a black wedge bitten out of the right-hand edge. Both clear, and the ground filling that wedge is the repair's own reading of the slope.

A scan through glass of a school group, great patches of the picture layer destroyed — A school group half eaten away behind its glass, returned as a full class. Count the children on the right against the scan before you decide what you have.

The same photograph returned complete, the destroyed areas filled with children and a shrub — A school group half eaten away behind its glass, returned as a full class. Count the children on the right against the scan before you decide what you have.

Before you try to free it

Take the frame apart from the back so the glass comes out with the print still on it, and keep it flat and dry. Scan it glass down on the platen with the lid up and the room lights off, which sees off most of the reflections. Soaking is sometimes the answer and sometimes the end of the photograph; the guide below is about when a conservator earns the fee.

What a conservator does that no software can

Questions about this sort of damage

Could I soak it off myself?: Sometimes, with cool water and a great deal of patience, and it is a genuine gamble with an irreplaceable print. Scan it through the glass first, and then you are risking a piece of paper rather than the photograph.
The scan through the glass looks dreadful. Worth sending?: Send it and find out at no cost. Glare and haze happen to be the sort of fault that lifts well, and you will know inside a few minutes rather than after a studio has quoted you.
Would a phone photograph be better?: It is a fair second choice when the glass will not go on a scanner. Flat daylight from a window, no flash, the phone held parallel to the glass, and yourself out of the reflection.

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