Yellowed First Communion Photos

When yellowing reaches a communion photo, the result is whites turned cream or brown and a warm cast lying over the whole image. The cause is nearly always acidic paper and album pages, cigarette smoke and the slow chemistry of fixer left in the print, and first communion photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the yellowed communion photo as a repair job: it removes the yellowing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the veil, the candle and the folded hands as photographed. Faces of a child in white holding a candle, a rosary or a prayer book that were lost to the yellowing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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