Creased Class Photos

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

The restoration reads the creased class photo as a repair job: it removes the creasing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping each child's face, the name board and the teacher as photographed. Faces of thirty children in rows with the teacher standing at the side that were lost to the creasing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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