Restoring photos of someone who has died

Why it feels different

With a living person, a bad result means taking a new photo. With someone who has died, the print in your hand may be one of only a few that exist, and the face in it is the face you remember. That changes what a good result means. It is not the sharpest or the most polished version. It is the one where you look and it is them.

For that reason everything in the process is set up to keep the likeness rather than to improve on it. No smoothing of skin, no reshaping of features, no brightening of teeth or eyes. The lines on a grandmother's face are part of her face.

What restoration does and does not touch

The software removes what happened to the paper: scratches, dust, creases, fading, colour casts, the mirror sheen on old shadows. It rebuilds the tone and reconstructs fine detail the scan lost, using the rest of the picture as reference. It does not decide that a chin should be narrower or a hairline higher. If a redo ever comes back with something changed, that is a failure, and you should press redo again or ask for a refund.

Colourisation, if you want it, is understated and plausible for the period: the fabrics, skin and sky of the decade the photo was taken, not a saturated postcard. If you would rather keep the photo black-and-white, ask for that when you request a redo and it stays monochrome; many people prefer the original tone for a photo they will frame.

Taking your time

There is no clock on the decision. The free preview shows the first photo restored before you pay anything, and you can look at it for as long as you like. After a purchase, redos are free and unlimited for fourteen days, so if the first result is nearly right you can try again without deciding today. The refund is full even after you have downloaded the files, so there is no point at which you are stuck with something that does not feel right.

• Free preview on your own photo before paying
• Unlimited free redos for fourteen days
• Ask for black-and-white on a redo if you prefer it
• Full refund, even after download, if it does not look like them

Photographing the prints

Take the print out of the frame if you can; glass adds reflections. Lay it on a table near a window, out of direct sun, and photograph it from directly above with the flash off, filling the frame. If the print is curled, a sheet of clean glass on top will flatten it. If the print is fragile, handle it by the edges and do not try to clean it with anything wet. A scanner at 300 to 600 dpi is better still, with every automatic correction turned off.

A photo of a photo, or a picture sent through a messaging app, still works; lost detail is reconstructed as far as is honest, and no further.

Who sees the photos

Nobody, unless you share them. The files are stored under a private link, used only to make your pack, and deleted thirty days after purchase, or earlier if you press delete. They are not used to train anything and there is no face database; the person in your photo is not matched, identified or kept. There is no account; we ask only for an email address to send the download link to.

Sharing with the family

Every pack includes a before/after card sized for a phone, and the Family archive and Heirloom packs add a short reveal video. People send these to siblings and cousins before an anniversary or a family gathering, and the reply is usually: who else has photos. One pack of ten is enough for most shoeboxes, and the 300 dpi print files mean the same photo can be framed in several homes.