Ancestor Portraits
Faded Ancestor Portraits
Ancestor portraits showing milky shadows, grey whites and a cast that drifts toward orange, magenta or cyan depending on the paper have almost always met dye layers breaking down over decades, faster in warmth and daylight. The fading sits on top of the image of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met, which is still there underneath.
Nothing in the ancestor portrait is redrawn for effect; the fading is treated as a layer to remove and the image of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met as the thing to keep. If the faded area covered the features, the period clothing and the studio props, the fill is inferred from what survives around it.
Start with Faded Photo Fixer on the faded ancestor portrait, then chain Face Restoration or the upscaler in the Studio if the ancestor portraits need it. The 4 free credits on a new account cover one Standard run on faded ancestor portraits.
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
- The features, the period clothing and the studio props, hidden under the fading
- Fading from dye layers breaking down over decades, faster in warmth and daylight, on ancestor portraits from the 1850s to 1910s
- Small faces of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met that the fading has taken the detail from
- Faded ancestor portraits that a copy shop refused to touch
Suggested order of passes
- 01
Remove the fading
Faded Photo Fixer targets milky shadows, grey whites and a cast that drifts toward orange, magenta or cyan depending on the paper while keeping the features, the period clothing and the studio props in the ancestor portrait untouched.
Faded Photo Fixer - 02
Repair the rest of the ancestor portrait
Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration addresses the usual wear on ancestor portraits, silver mirroring, a tarnished tintype surface and cabinet-card mounts that have gone brittle, once the fading is gone.
Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration - 03
Sharpen the faces of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met
Recovers the eye and skin detail the fading softened; keep it at natural strength on ancestor portraits unless the faces are tiny.
Face Restoration - 04
Upscale the ancestor portrait for reprinting
Adds the pixels a wall print needs after the fading repair, with the shape of the faded ancestor portraits unchanged.
Image Upscaler
This subject, by damage type
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