Breathe...

Just as you need space to breathe, your art needs space to breathe.  Failure to leave a breathing gap between your art and the glass (known as glazing in the picture framing industry) is akin to playing Russian Roulette with your keepsakes.  You may get lucky for a time, but sooner or later the hammer will find the occupied chamber.  When this happens, the photograph adheres to the glass.  And when you attempt to remove the photo, you leave splotches of image on the glass and torn paper in your hand.

If lucky, you have another copy of the image.  If not, your options are extremely limited.  In this example, we aligned the paper image with the portion adhered to the glass as closely as possible.  We then scanned the image into Photoshop and began the painstaking repairs.  Not all photos can be repaired.  Frequently, when key features such as faces and eyes have been damaged, the photo is beyond repair. In this case, we were able to salvage the photos and return the images to the owner.

Look around your home and office.  Do you have treasured photos in direct contact with glass?  Can you readily replace the images in the event they stick?  If not, consider reframing your photos with a mat which will create breathing space between the photo and the glass.  While you have it out of a frame, gently wipe off the dust and fingerprints and scan it for posterity. Grant’s Frames offers digitizing services in addition to our custom picture framing. We can scan your photos to a memory device or cloud service. It goes without saying that we can print your photo and design a mat and frame combination that will protect it and show the world how much the image means to you!

Photos and frame as they arrived to Grant’s Frames.

Click on the images to see These images show the destruction that can happen when photos meet glass. The emulsion layer on the top of the photo adheres to the glass.

Restored photo on the left.