Portrait UnionThe damage is on the print, not in the picture
A crease across a face, a brown tide line from a wet cellar, a tear held together with tape for thirty years. Almost all of it sits on the surface of the paper while the photograph underneath is still perfectly there.
Portrait Union repairs a damaged photograph from a scan or a phone photo of the print. An image model works through the scratches, creases, tears, stains and fading and returns the photograph at its own proportions, in colour. The preview is free and watermarked, the finished file is €4.99, and a gallery canvas starts at €69.99 with shipping included.
Nothing is charged until you have seen the result, and there is no account to make.
Two kinds of damage, and only one of them is repairable
Everything here turns on one distinction, and it is worth making before you decide whether your print is worth uploading.
The first kind is damage over the photograph. A scratch, a fold, a stain, dust, the metallic sheen that dark areas develop as they age, the general loss of contrast as the emulsion fades: these lie on top of an image that is still complete underneath. They are removed by making the smallest local corrections that take the damage away, reading from the intact picture on either side of it. This is the ordinary case and it is the case that works.
The second kind is damage that took the photograph away. A missing corner. A face torn off. An area burned, bleached out, or eaten through. There is nothing under that damage to read from, and the only way to produce something there is to invent it — a shoulder that was never photographed, a room nobody stood in, or, at worst, a face that belongs to no one. That is not done here.
Where the damage hides something, the restoration blends from what survives next to it and leaves the uncertain part softly unresolved. It does not guess a feature back into existence, and a faithful result that is slightly soft is the one worth keeping.
In practice a missing area comes back plain rather than filled in, or the picture is cropped to what survives, and a face too damaged to read stays a little soft rather than becoming a sharper stranger. A print that is nearly your father is worse than a print that is honestly damaged, and it is worse in a way you would keep noticing.
Photographing a print that is in pieces
The general advice — flat, even daylight, no flash, camera straight above, fill the frame — is on the restoration page and it applies here too. Damage adds one thing to it: the restoration can only work with what is in front of the camera, so the job before you upload is to get as much of the photograph into one frame as possible.
If the print is in two or more pieces, lay them together on a plain surface and butt the edges up until the picture reads as one picture, then photograph the whole thing. The remaining break line is the kind of damage that is repaired. If a piece is missing, photograph it as it is rather than arranging the others to hide the gap — a gap the restoration can see is a gap it will leave alone, which is the outcome you want.
A print curled from decades in a roll wants weighting flat at the edges rather than forcing; a print behind glass is better taken out of the frame than photographed through it, because the reflection is a new piece of damage sitting exactly where the old one is.
The one check that can turn a photograph away
A restoration is not reshaped into a portrait format; it keeps the proportions your photograph already has, which is why upright, landscape and square prints are all offered for it. The image model, though, answers on a fixed set of shapes, so the upload is trimmed very slightly to reach the nearest one, and the print is trimmed again to reach a canvas size. Both trims are counted against one budget of 6.5% of the original photograph.
Most photographs are nowhere near that. A few are: a panorama, a tall narrow strip cut from a group shot, a scan already cropped hard by somebody else. Those are refused, in these words:
“This photo's shape would need more than a 6.5% trim to restore. Please crop it a little closer to a standard print shape (such as 4:5, 3:4, 2:3 or square) and upload it again.”
It is worth knowing three things about that message. It arrives before the model is called, so nothing has been generated and nothing spent. It does not consume your free preview for the day. And it is entirely fixable at your end: crop the photograph a little closer to one of the shapes it names and upload it again.
What is looked at, and what is not
People send us the only surviving photograph of somebody who has died, so it matters to say plainly what happens to it.
No person at Portrait Union opens your upload. The checks that run are mechanical and narrow: that the file is an image type we can decode, that it is not so large it would be a way of attacking the server, that its shape fits the crop budget above, and how many previews have come from your browser and your network today so the free allowance means something. Nothing recognises a face, matches anyone against anything, or records who is in the picture.
What is not ours to promise: the image model is run by a provider that applies its own safety checks, and it can decline a photograph on its own account. When that happens it is final for that photograph rather than something a second attempt will get past, and we say so rather than letting you spend the evening retrying.
An unpurchased preview link closes 48 hours after upload and the files behind it are queued for deletion. If you buy, the files stay available for you to download again, and the original upload is queued for deletion 30 days after the last completed purchase. The detail is in the privacy policy.
What arrives, and what it costs
Upload the print and, in about a minute, you see one restored preview at up to 400 px with a watermark. That preview is free — one per visitor per day — and it needs no account. The private link to it closes 48 hours after upload.
The free preview is watermarked and up to 400 px on the long edge. Your watermark-free restoration is delivered at the resolution the restoration model produces, about 4 megapixels, and is enlarged separately for canvas prints; the exact download dimensions and any restoration crop are shown beside your preview before payment. Only print sizes that keep the combined restoration and print crop within 6.5% of the original upload are offered. Pixel dimensions do not guarantee newly recovered detail.
The watermark-free file is €4.99. A gallery canvas starts at €69.99, with shipping to 35 countries and the digital file included, and because a restoration keeps its own proportions the sizes offered for your photograph are the ones that fit its shape. The full table is on pricing.
There is a worked example — a creased studio print from the nineteen-fifties, before and after — on the restoration page, which is also where the upload box lives. If the print is black and white as well as damaged, what the colour can and cannot know is on colourising a black-and-white photograph.
Questions about damaged prints
My photograph is torn into two pieces — can I still send it?
Yes. Lay the pieces together on a flat, plain surface so the picture reads as one picture, and photograph the whole thing from directly above. A break line running across an image that is otherwise complete is the ordinary case and is repaired. What cannot be done is a piece that is not in front of the camera: if part of the print is genuinely lost, that area is left plain or the picture is cropped to what survives.
It said my photo's shape needs more than a 6.5% trim. What does that mean?
A restoration keeps your photograph's own proportions, and the model answers on a fixed set of shapes, so the upload is trimmed slightly to reach the nearest one. Unusually long, narrow or already heavily cropped photographs would need more trimming than the 6.5% ceiling allows, and those are refused before anything is generated. Crop the photograph a little closer to a standard print shape — 4:5, 3:4, 2:3 or square — and upload it again. The refusal costs nothing, and it does not use up your free preview for the day.
Does anybody look at my photograph?
No person here opens it. The automated checks are narrow and mechanical: that the file is an image of a type we can read, that it is not enormous, that its shape fits the crop budget, and how many previews have come from your browser and your network today. Nothing identifies anyone in the picture. The image model's provider applies its own safety checks and can refuse a photograph on its own account, which is final for that photograph rather than something a retry can change.
How many damaged prints can I send in one evening?
One free preview per visitor per day, and each purchase adds another the same day — so a bought restoration lets you try the next print immediately. Buying is also what makes sense with a stack of them: you see each one free before deciding whether it was worth keeping.
Find out whether it is too far gone
One free preview answers the question in about a minute. If the damage really has taken the picture, you will see that too.
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