This was a small grade school photo of someone’s mom, which they wanted to repair and enlarge. It was one of the worst damaged photos I’ve ever worked on short of actually being torn, because beyond the obvious cracks, the entire surface of the original print was a fine network for cracks. I had the customer scan it at very high resolution so it could be enlarged, which just defined those cracks more.

As you can see if you click to zoom in, the close up of the scan reveals quite a lot of damage. I made sure to tell the customer that it might not be a perfect photo in the end – a lot of cracks were right across her face – but I would do what I could to remove and minimize the appearance of damage.

In the end, the photo really didn’t come out too bad! Sometimes I need to resort to a look that is a little more like a painting than the fine detail of photography, to mask all of the work that has been done, and this is a good example of that. It is something the family can enjoy into the future, though, and that was the goal.