Convert Your Prints to Digital

Photo prints are made from silver halide crystals or chromogenic dye couplers suspended in a gelatin emulsion on a paper or resin-coated paper base. Unlike slides, which are translucent and store the image in the dyes themselves, prints rely on light reflecting off a paper substrate. That paper substrate is the print's biggest enemy — paper is a hostile environment for photographic chemistry.

The first failure mode is silver oxidation. Black-and-white prints store the image as fine silver particles, which slowly oxidise in air and turn from black to brown over decades. The result is the characteristic warm-brown "sepia" tone you see on old family photos — except the original image wasn't sepia, it was crisp black-and-white. The shift is gradual but irreversible without restoration.

Colour prints suffer from dye coupler fading. The cyan dye fades fastest (especially under fluorescent or sunlight exposure), leaving prints with a pink or magenta cast. By the 1980s, photo manufacturers had largely solved this with more stable dyes, but anything from the 1950s through the 1970s — exactly the era of most family photos — uses dyes that have shifted significantly.

Storage damage is the third problem. Photos kept in cheap albums (especially the "magnetic" peel-and-stick albums from the 1970s) get glued to the page over time. Photos in shoeboxes get scuffed against each other. Photos exposed to humidity grow mould or warp. Photos in attics get heat damage. Every storage environment outside a climate-controlled archive is doing some damage every year.