Water-Damaged Holiday Photos

When water damage reaches a holiday photo, 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 holiday photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the water-damaged holiday photo as a repair job: it removes the water damage and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the decorations, the wrapping paper and the tree lights as photographed. Faces of the family around the tree, the table or the menorah that were lost to the water damage are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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