Wartime Photos
Creased Wartime Photos
Wartime photos showing a white line where the emulsion broke along the fold, very often straight through a face have almost always met a print folded into a wallet, a letter or a pocket, then flattened again decades later. The creasing sits on top of the image of a soldier at camp, a sweetheart back home or a family in a bombed street, which is still there underneath.
Nothing in the wartime photo is redrawn for effect; the creasing is treated as a layer to remove and the image of a soldier at camp, a sweetheart back home or a family in a bombed street as the thing to keep. If the creased area covered the uniform, the date on the back and the handwriting, the fill is inferred from what survives around it.
Start with Scratch & Tear Repair on the creased wartime photo, then chain Face Restoration or the upscaler in the Studio if the wartime photos need it. The 4 free credits on a new account cover one Standard run on creased wartime photos.
Original on the left, restored on the right; hover to see more of the repair. Made in the Studio from a scan of the print.
What matters for these photos
- Creasing from a print folded into a wallet, a letter or a pocket, then flattened again decades later, on wartime photos from the 1910s to 1940s
- Small faces of a soldier at camp, a sweetheart back home or a family in a bombed street that the creasing has taken the detail from
- Creased wartime photos that a copy shop refused to touch
- A creased wartime photo needed for a memorial, an anniversary or a reprint
Suggested order of passes
- 01
Remove the creasing
Scratch & Tear Repair targets a white line where the emulsion broke along the fold, very often straight through a face while keeping the uniform, the date on the back and the handwriting in the wartime photo untouched.
Scratch & Tear Repair - 02
Run a full pass on the wartime photo
Picks up the remaining scratches, fading and softness on creased wartime photos after the creasing is removed.
Photo Restoration - 03
Sharpen the faces of a soldier at camp, a sweetheart back home or a family in a bombed street
Recovers the eye and skin detail the creasing softened; keep it at natural strength on wartime photos unless the faces are tiny.
Face Restoration - 04
Upscale the wartime photo for reprinting
Adds the pixels a wall print needs after the creasing repair, with the shape of the creased wartime photos unchanged.
Image Upscaler
This subject, by damage type
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