Fire-Damaged Family Portraits

When fire damage reaches a family portrait, the result is charred and curled edges, a brown scorch gradient, soot in the grain and areas lost entirely. The cause is nearly always a house fire, a smoke-filled room or a print that sat too close to a heater, and family portraits kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the fire-damaged family portrait as a repair job: it removes the fire damage and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping every face, the seating order and the clothing as photographed. Faces of three or four generations posed in a studio or on the front steps that were lost to the fire damage are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For fire-damaged family portraits the order is fire damage first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a family portrait for a screen; Pro or Max gives a fire-damaged print more detail for reprinting.