What went wrong with the print

Water-Damaged

brown tide lines, blotches where the emulsion swelled and prints stuck face to face or to the album sleeve

Torn

a ragged white line where the paper fibers show, sometimes with a missing corner or a whole strip gone

Faded

milky shadows, grey whites and a cast that drifts toward orange, magenta or cyan depending on the paper

Scratched

fine white or dark lines across the emulsion, often clustered in one direction

Moldy

fuzzy grey or white patches, brown foxing spots and a musty smell that comes with the print

Sun-Bleached

a washed-out image with almost no contrast, sometimes with a darker stripe where the mat protected it

Cracked

a web of fine dark or light lines across the surface, with flakes lifting where the cracks meet

Creased

a white line where the emulsion broke along the fold, very often straight through a face

Stained

brown or grey blotches with hard edges, sometimes a ring, sometimes a smear across the sky

Yellowed

whites turned cream or brown and a warm cast lying over the whole image

Blurry

soft edges, doubled outlines on faces and hands, and detail that never resolves however close you look

Low-Resolution

blocky pixels, mushy skin and faces the size of a fingernail that fall apart when enlarged

Fire-Damaged

charred and curled edges, a brown scorch gradient, soot in the grain and areas lost entirely

Sticky-Album

yellow stripes of adhesive on the front and back, torn emulsion where the print was peeled off, and a tacky film