Faded Pet Photos

When fading reaches a pet photo, the result is milky shadows, grey whites and a cast that drifts toward orange, magenta or cyan depending on the paper. The cause is nearly always dye layers breaking down over decades, faster in warmth and daylight, and pet photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the faded pet photo as a repair job: it removes the fading and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the markings, the collar and the coat texture as photographed. Faces of a dog, cat or horse, sometimes with a child holding the lead that were lost to the fading are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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