Torn Funeral and Memorial Photos

When tearing reaches a memorial photo, the result is a ragged white line where the paper fibers show, sometimes with a missing corner or a whole strip gone. The cause is nearly always a print pulled out of a frame or an album, an argument over who keeps it, or a small child's hands, and funeral and memorial photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the torn memorial photo as a repair job: it removes the tearing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the face, the expression and the way they held themselves as photographed. Faces of the person being remembered, in the last good picture the family has of them that were lost to the tearing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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