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I have a printed photo that was bleached out by the sun. Is there any way I can recover or save it?

Michael C
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Kaila
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  • It is highly unlikely you can recover the image if the print has been sun-bleached. It's marginally possible there might be some arcane chemistry you could use to recover some contrast but I've never heard of it. Although, come to think of it, how exactly does "sun bleaching" turn silver granules back to white? – Jim Garrison Sep 08 '16 at 05:26
  • @jimgarrison you assume the print was a traditional photographic one. It may well be an inkjet or even laser print. – ElendilTheTall Sep 08 '16 at 08:22
  • Yes - if you can get a digital version of the image (a scan of the print etc), then any half-decent image-editors 'auto-correct' will make a big difference. Someone skilled in photo restorations will do a much better job. Could you post a picture of the picture so we can see the extent of the fading? The main problem is that the colours in the print will have faded by different amounts. – Steve Ives Sep 08 '16 at 14:59

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While it is not a direct solution, it can be possible to produce a substantially improved image by photographing or scanning the image and processing it digitally.

The following is loaded with terms "may", "can sometimes" and the like. That's the nature of the endeavour. Nothing is certain but some nice surprises "can sometimes" result.

Where information has been lost it cannot be directly recovered but it can be that a major bias is introduced so that eg one colour dominates, and this can sometimes be compensated for.

Direct scanning may give as good a result as any- and I've had occasional pleasing results with this. But, photographing with various illumination sources or filters may give an improved result by optically 'dealing with' some colours pre capture, I say "dealing with" as this might include changing relative levels either way or even "just maybe" a degree of colour shift. Use of eg a flash plus a lamp at various angles and other inexact or hard to analyse combinations MAY give improvements.

Russell McMahon
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