Ancestor Portraits
Torn Ancestor Portraits
A torn ancestor portrait is a common case: a print pulled out of a frame or an album, an argument over who keeps it, or a small child's hands leaves a ragged white line where the paper fibers show, sometimes with a missing corner or a whole strip gone, and ancestor portraits from the 1850s to 1910s were rarely stored well enough to escape it.
Scratch & Tear Repair is the tool for torn ancestor portraits: it targets a ragged white line where the paper fibers show, sometimes with a missing corner or a whole strip gone and leaves the rest of the ancestor portrait alone. Output follows the shape of the upload, so the features, the period clothing and the studio props end up where they always were in the torn original.
Scan the torn ancestor portrait flat, or photograph it and run Photo-of-a-Photo Fixer first, so the tearing is the only thing left to repair. The ancestor portraits come back in seconds, and the 4 free credits on sign-up cover the first Standard pass at the tearing.
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
- Small faces of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met that the tearing has taken the detail from
- Torn ancestor portraits that a copy shop refused to touch
- A torn ancestor portrait needed for a memorial, an anniversary or a reprint
- A ragged white line where the paper fibers show, sometimes with a missing corner or a whole strip gone, spread over a ancestor portrait
Suggested order of passes
- 01
Remove the tearing
Scratch & Tear Repair targets a ragged white line where the paper fibers show, sometimes with a missing corner or a whole strip gone while keeping the features, the period clothing and the studio props in the ancestor portrait untouched.
Scratch & Tear Repair - 02
Repair the rest of the ancestor portrait
Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration addresses the usual wear on ancestor portraits, silver mirroring, a tarnished tintype surface and cabinet-card mounts that have gone brittle, once the tearing is gone.
Tintype & Daguerreotype Restoration - 03
Upscale the ancestor portrait for reprinting
Adds the pixels a wall print needs after the tearing repair, with the shape of the torn ancestor portraits unchanged.
Image Upscaler
This subject, by damage type
Questions
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