Creased Holiday Photos

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

The restoration reads the creased holiday photo as a repair job: it removes the creasing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the decorations, the wrapping paper and the tree lights as photographed. Faces of the family around the tree, the table or the menorah that were lost to the creasing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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