DIY Repair Water Damaged Family Photos

A few years ago we arrived home after going to visit my dying sister. On opening the front door my husband said "What the heck happened." With that, he raced off around the side of the house. Typical me I walked straight in not seeing the problem. I found out in a hurry, the floor was covered an inch deep in water, my shoes were squelching as I walked through the house.

I spotted my brand new front loader washing machine in the middle of the floor. The water pouring from the taps where the hoses used to be connected. I raced outside again, but my husband was turning off the water.

Oh boy, what a mess, every floor was covered in water. We spent an hour or so opening the doors and trying to bucket and mop some of the water out. It was hopeless. Now I am so glad that my husband thought to turn the power of before I entered the house as some of the power plugs were close to the floor. So much for being water wise with the front loader. We were so glad we came home when we did and not stayed for a meal.

We survived; many people suffer much worse dramas. We rang the insurance and they were really brilliant. The house was completely empty by ten oclock that night, all stacked under the patio.

Oh no, my Photos!

Two days later, I found my photos amongst this mess. Some pages of the albums were stuck together. Other loose photos, which were in a cardboard box, were saturated. We did our best and separated most of them laying them out on tables etc as best we could. Although it was the middle of winter and pouring rain outside. We were lucky to have room under the patio. I found it is easier to replace the albums than trying to resurrect them.

Repairing  torn Photos

The pictures that were torn, I scanned and used the program called paint shop pro, to reconstruct. There is a tool called a clone brush. If you right click on the area you need to copy then move your mouse over to the area you need to reconstruct, you can actually redo the picture, a little bit at a time.

For instance: if a persons leg is missing, then carefully right click on the right leg, then left click where you want to put the missing leg, now you can recreate another leg. Make sure to keep the little cursor cross on the part you are copying. If it moves off that, then it will copy what ever it is on, so be careful.

This takes a little practice but it works fine. You can also use this tool to remove cracks, water marks etc.

Photographs should be attended to first. You can wash these if dirty, be careful when you clean the surfaces, as with any wet photo you can damage it. Lay each photo on a flat surface to dry. They could curl up, although you can straighten them later. If damaged you could still scan and print new ones if not too bad.

With negatives, you should, wash, and dry them. If you have a scanner that copies negatives or film, then all you need to do is, scan and print new ones. Nothing has been lost.

You should be able to treat slides the same way as negatives, except if the covers are made of cardboard then that is best removed. Then scan and reprint. If, in plastic covers, drying out is all they need.

Therefore all was not lost. Good luck, trying this out. We found the scanner and printer to be of great assistance in our time of need.