How To Save Old Photos That Are Stuck Together
Apr 20, 2014
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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If you’ve been around long enough to be printing photos, and even longer to be storing them in shoe boxes, you must have had that frustrating experience when two (or more) photos got stuck together. It feels as if there were super-glued and any attempt to apply force to separate them will result in damaging the photos.
wikiHow shares a great tip to separate those photos, simply soak them in warm water:
Soak any that are stuck together. Water will not harm most photographs, as exposure to water is actually part of the chemical development process for conventional photographs. If photographs have stuck together: soak the photographs for at least an hour in lukewarm water. Gently peel apart.
To dry those photos off wikiHow recommends either hanging them on a cloth-line or (if that is not an option), lay them down flat on a piece of cloth or paper towel to dry peacefully.
[How to Save a Wet Photo Album via lifehacker]
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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8 responses to “How To Save Old Photos That Are Stuck Together”
Think this might work for photos stuck to glass?
Could this work for photos stuck to the glass in a frame also? I have had photos to restore that were stuck to the glass, and instead of trying to remove, I do a high quality scan and restore from that.
To get uniform drying, add Agepon or Photoflo in water
Just don’t try this with inkjet prints. This method is only for traditional darkroom prints.
I tried this on 2 photo’s that got stuck together from 1969 it didn’t work! In fact I had to rescue them rather sharply from the water as the colours began to run so obviously it dosen’t work too well on old photos this method must be current photo methods such as inkjet or laser.
Yes I too tried, in lukewarm water for 3 days, they didn’t disentangle at all. Any new ideas?
No! Not intended for digital prints from a Computer printer!
This technique is for old chemicaly processed photographs. It was a process using light sensitive paper in a dark room with film negatives and a timed print projector. The paper was then processed through several trays of chemicals, water rinses, a fixative, and then a final rinse.
Prints from Color printers are just ink on paper and if stuck together are trashed.
I tried this with some old photos, did absolutely nothing. Just a waste of distilled water.