What this mode does
Water leaves two kinds of mark. The stained area itself has usually changed colour and darkened a little, and its edge, where the water dried, collects dirt in a dark line. The first is a local cast and the second is narrow damage, and this page treats them differently.
For the stain, paint the area with the Local light brush. The page can measure it: the mean colour inside what you painted is compared with a ring of picture just outside it, and exposure, temperature and tint are set so the inside matches. Those three numbers are shown and can be moved. The correction is feathered at the painted edge and touches nothing else on the print.
For the tide line, mark it with Detect, the mask brush or the lasso, and the fill closes it from the picture on either side, like a scratch.
When this is the wrong tool
- Where water lifted or dissolved the emulsion, the picture underneath is gone. That is damage to fill (or to redraw, deliberately), not tone to correct.
- A print stuck to glass or to another print should not be pulled apart to scan it. A conservator can separate it; a scan cannot.
- Mould that grew while the print was wet is a different mark: use the foxing and mould route, which looks for spots.
Questions about water damaged photos
Can a water stain be removed from a photo?
What about the dark line at the edge of the stain?
The picture under the stain has come away. Can that be fixed?
Does it work on tape and glue stains too?
Is my photo uploaded?
Related
- Remove foxing and mould spotsA detector for brown spots two to forty pixels across, proposed on the mask for you to check before anything is filled.
- Restore an old photographOpens on fade correction, for a print that has gone pale and warm.
- Scratches and dustOpens with detection turned up and the brush already out.
- Caring for prints in a humid climateConservation figures for humidity and heat, what the monsoon does to prints, and why to scan before it.
