Scratched Immigration Photos

When scratching reaches a immigration photo, the result is fine white or dark lines across the emulsion, often clustered in one direction. The cause is nearly always loose storage in a shoebox, a drawer shared with keys and coins, or a print dragged across scanner glass, and immigration photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the scratched immigration photo as a repair job: it removes the scratching and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the luggage tags, the clothing and any writing on the back as photographed. Faces of a family at the dock, at a ship rail or in the doorway of a first home in a new country that were lost to the scratching are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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