Faded Sports Team Photos

When fading reaches a team 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 sports team photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the faded team photo as a repair job: it removes the fading and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the jersey numbers, the trophy and the team banner as photographed. Faces of two rows of players with the coach at one end and a ball on the ground in front that were lost to the fading are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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