Creased Childhood Photos

When creasing reaches a childhood 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 childhood photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the creased childhood photo as a repair job: it removes the creasing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the toys, the clothing and the expression as photographed. Faces of you or your parents as children, in the yard, at the table or on a bike that were lost to the creasing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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