Creased Baptism Photos

When creasing reaches a baptism photo, the result is a white line where the emulsion broke along the fold, very often straight through a face. The cause is nearly always a print folded into a wallet, a letter or a pocket, then flattened again decades later, and baptism photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the creased baptism photo as a repair job: it removes the creasing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the gown, the font and the faces of the godparents as photographed. Faces of an infant in a long white gown held by the godparents at the font that were lost to the creasing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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