Water-Damaged Ancestor Portraits

When water damage reaches a ancestor portrait, the result is brown tide lines, blotches where the emulsion swelled and prints stuck face to face or to the album sleeve. The cause is nearly always a flooded basement, a burst pipe, a leaking roof or a damp garage, and ancestor portraits kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the water-damaged ancestor portrait as a repair job: it removes the water damage and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the features, the period clothing and the studio props as photographed. Faces of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met that were lost to the water damage are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For water-damaged ancestor portraits the order is water damage first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a ancestor portrait for a screen; Pro or Max gives a water-damaged print more detail for reprinting.