Cracked Workplace Photos

When cracked emulsion reaches a workplace 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 workplace photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the cracked workplace photo as a repair job: it removes the cracked emulsion and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the signage, the tools and the company name as photographed. Faces of a crew lined up in front of the factory, shop, mine or office that were lost to the cracked emulsion are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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