Water-Damaged Wedding Photos

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

The restoration reads the water-damaged wedding photo as a repair job: it removes the water damage and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the lace of the dress, the ring hands and the bouquet as photographed. Faces of the couple, the wedding party and both sets of parents that were lost to the water damage are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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