This family portrait from the late 1920's is moderately faded and stained — the paper base has turned from the original cream color to tan, and the originally-warm-town image has faded and browned. There is also uneven fading of the oval vignette background. Fortunately, there is very little physical damage — some cracking and dirt stains and tape along the edges, all readily repaired.

Restoration was straightforward. The background was erased and filled with a light cream tone to match the original color of the paper stock. A new vignette background was laid over the old to mask the uneven fading. The color of the image was adjusted to approximate a traditional warm-tone photographic paper, and the tones were corrected to produce a better black and richer overall tonal scale. The cracks and dirt stains were removed.

(Time to restore: approximately two hours)