Cracked Funeral and Memorial Photos

When cracked emulsion reaches a memorial photo, the result is a web of fine dark or light lines across the surface, with flakes lifting where the cracks meet. The cause is nearly always a print that dried out and stiffened before it was bent, or a plate whose coating crazed with age, and funeral and memorial photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the cracked memorial photo as a repair job: it removes the cracked emulsion and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the face, the expression and the way they held themselves as photographed. Faces of the person being remembered, in the last good picture the family has of them that were lost to the cracked emulsion are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For cracked funeral and memorial photos the order is cracked emulsion first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a memorial photo for a screen; Pro or Max gives a cracked print more detail for reprinting.