A Colour Print Lost Under a Yellow Cast
Colour prints from the 1970s and 1980s fail in a very particular way, and it looks far worse than it actually is.
Drag the handle to compare the original with the restored version.
The photograph
A snapshot of an elderly couple outdoors, taken on colour film some time in the 1980s and kept in an album ever since.
The damage
The print had shifted almost entirely to yellow-green. One dye layer had degraded much faster than the others, which flattened the whole image into a single murky tone — you could see that there were two people and not much else. The contrast had gone as well, so there was no real black or white left anywhere in the frame.
The work
This is a correction rather than a repair, and it is done layer by layer. Each colour channel was rebalanced separately instead of applying one global filter, which is what brings skin tones back to something believable. With the cast removed, the tonal range was rebuilt to restore depth. The detail was there the whole time — her red cardigan, his navy suit, the trees behind them — it was simply buried under the colour shift.
This was a faded photo restoration job — see more on faded photo restoration.
| Service level | Basic restoration |
| Price band | £9+ |
| Turnaround | Under 24 hours |
Other Restorations
Torn Baby Portrait Rebuilt from Fragments
One of the most damaged photographs I have worked on, and proof that a print in this condition is not beyond saving.
An Edwardian Child Portrait in Colour
Seeing a child from a hundred years ago in colour is the moment most clients tell me they had not expected.
Surface Cracking Across a Studio Portrait
When emulsion starts to lift, the damage spreads across the whole print rather than along one line. It needs patience more than anything else.
Have a photograph like this?
Send me a scan or a clear phone photo. I will tell you honestly what can be recovered, and what it will cost, within three hours.
