Yellowed Prom Photos

When yellowing reaches a prom 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 prom photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the yellowed prom photo as a repair job: it removes the yellowing and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the corsage, the dress color and the backdrop as photographed. Faces of a couple posed under an arch or against a painted backdrop that were lost to the yellowing are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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