Birthday Photos
Yellowed Birthday Photos
Birthday photos showing whites turned cream or brown and a warm cast lying over the whole image have almost always met acidic paper and album pages, cigarette smoke and the slow chemistry of fixer left in the print. The yellowing sits on top of the image of a child leaning over a cake with the candles lit, which is still there underneath.
Nothing in the birthday photo is redrawn for effect; the yellowing is treated as a layer to remove and the image of a child leaning over a cake with the candles lit as the thing to keep. If the yellowed area covered the cake, the candles and the party hats, the fill is inferred from what survives around it.
Start with Faded Photo Fixer on the yellowed birthday photo, then chain Face Restoration or the upscaler in the Studio if the birthday photos need it. The 4 free credits on a new account cover one Standard run on yellowed birthday photos.
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
- The cake, the candles and the party hats, hidden under the yellowing
- Yellowing from acidic paper and album pages, cigarette smoke and the slow chemistry of fixer left in the print, on birthday photos from the 1950s to 1990s
- Small faces of a child leaning over a cake with the candles lit that the yellowing has taken the detail from
- Yellowed birthday photos that a copy shop refused to touch
Suggested order of passes
- 01
Remove the yellowing
Faded Photo Fixer targets whites turned cream or brown and a warm cast lying over the whole image while keeping the cake, the candles and the party hats in the birthday photo untouched.
Faded Photo Fixer - 02
Repair the rest of the birthday photo
Exposure Fixer addresses the usual wear on birthday photos, candlelight underexposed to near black, a yellow date stamp and an edge curled by a sticky album, once the yellowing is gone.
Exposure Fixer - 03
Sharpen the faces of a child leaning over a cake with the candles lit
Recovers the eye and skin detail the yellowing softened; keep it at natural strength on birthday photos unless the faces are tiny.
Face Restoration - 04
Upscale the birthday photo for reprinting
Adds the pixels a wall print needs after the yellowing repair, with the shape of the yellowed birthday photos unchanged.
Image Upscaler
This subject, by damage type
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