Will a child leaning over a cake with the candles lit still look like themselves after the staining is removed?

The prompts keep every face, age and expression in the stained birthday photo as photographed. Where the stained area covered a face, compare the result with other birthday photos and with family memory before you print.

Do I need to scan stained birthday photos?

A flat scan is best, but a phone photo of the stained birthday photo works too; run Photo-of-a-Photo Fixer first to crop and remove glare, then repair the staining.

How many credits does a stained birthday photo take?

The 4 free credits on a new account cover one Standard restoration of stained birthday photos. Pro and Max return more detail on the cake, the candles and the party hats where the staining was heavy; see pricing for the current amounts.

Can I colorize the birthday photo after fixing the staining?

Yes. Repair the stained birthday photo first, then run the Photo Colorizer on the result. Colors are inferred from the era and the materials in the repaired stained birthday photos, so type any remembered colors into the hints field.

Birthday Photos

Stained Birthday Photos

A stained birthday photo is a common case: coffee, ink, adhesive, fingerprints and whatever else was on the kitchen table that day leaves brown or grey blotches with hard edges, sometimes a ring, sometimes a smear across the sky, and birthday photos from the 1950s to 1990s were rarely stored well enough to escape it.

Stain & Spot Remover is the tool for stained birthday photos: it targets brown or grey blotches with hard edges, sometimes a ring, sometimes a smear across the sky and leaves the rest of the birthday photo alone. Output follows the shape of the upload, so the cake, the candles and the party hats end up where they always were in the stained original.

Scan the stained birthday photo flat, or photograph it and run Photo-of-a-Photo Fixer first, so the staining is the only thing left to repair. The birthday photos come back in seconds, and the 4 free credits on sign-up cover the first Standard pass at the staining.

Open with these settings Stain & Spot Remover

Stained Birthday Photos, the original print

OriginalRestored

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 cake, the candles and the party hats, hidden under the staining
Staining from coffee, ink, adhesive, fingerprints and whatever else was on the kitchen table that day, on birthday photos from the 1950s to 1990s
Small faces of a child leaning over a cake with the candles lit that the staining has taken the detail from
Stained birthday photos that a copy shop refused to touch

Suggested order of passes

01
Remove the staining
Stain & Spot Remover targets brown or grey blotches with hard edges, sometimes a ring, sometimes a smear across the sky while keeping the cake, the candles and the party hats in the birthday photo untouched.
Stain & Spot Remover
02
Repair the rest of the birthday photo
Exposure Fixer addresses the usual wear on birthday photos, candlelight underexposed to near black, a yellow date stamp and an edge curled by a sticky album, once the staining is gone.
Exposure Fixer
03
Upscale the birthday photo for reprinting
Adds the pixels a wall print needs after the staining repair, with the shape of the stained birthday photos unchanged.
Image Upscaler