Sun-Bleached School Photos

When sun bleaching reaches a school portrait, the result is a washed-out image with almost no contrast, sometimes with a darker stripe where the mat protected it. The cause is nearly always a frame on a sunny wall or a windowsill, where ultraviolet light broke the dyes down year after year, and school photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the sun-bleached school portrait as a repair job: it removes the sun bleaching and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the backdrop color, the collar and the gap-toothed smile as photographed. Faces of one child in front of a painted studio backdrop, taken each autumn that were lost to the sun bleaching are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For sun-bleached school photos the order is sun bleaching first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a school portrait for a screen; Pro or Max gives a sun-bleached print more detail for reprinting.