How to Save Water-Damaged Photos

Disaster struck and you weren’t prepared: your photos have been damaged by water.

Whether there was a flood, a leak, or a burst pipe, it is possible to salvage water-damaged photos, with just a bit of effort.

Most printed photographs, photographic negatives, and color slides can be cleaned, air-dried and saved in just a few steps.

1. Get them out of the water

Carefully lift the photos from the mud and dirty water. Remove them from the clear image slides of water-logged albums and separate any that are stuck together.

When photos are stuck together because of water, slowly pull them apart. Make sure not to rub or touch the wet emulsion of the photo surface.

2. Rinse your images

Gently rinse both sides the photograph, negative, or color slide in a bucket or sink filled with clear, cold water. Don’t use soap! Hold the images by their sides and dip them into the water—don’t rub the images to get dirt or mud off! Change the water frequently as you do this.

3. Lay the wet images face-up to dry

Time is of the essence, so as soon as you can arrange adequate space, lay each wet photo face-up on any clean blotting paper, such as a paper towel. The wet photos shouldn’t be overlapping at all. Don’t use newspapers or printed paper towels, as the ink may transfer to your wet photos.

Change the blotting paper every hour or two until the photos dry. Try to dry the photos indoors if possible, as sun and wind will cause them to curl more intensely.

If you don’t have time to dry your damaged photos right away, carefully stack the wet photos between sheets of wax paper and seal them in a resealable plastic bags. Then, put them in the freezer to inhibit damage. This way, the photos can be defrosted, separated, and air-dried when you have the space to properly air dry them and the time to change the blotting paper.

4. Scan the dry images and reprint them

Once your keepers are dry, scan them. You can’t use a regular document scanner to scan photos. Or, you can, but the quality won’t be worth keeping. (Learn more about scanning photos here.) Once the water-damaged images are scanned, throw them away.

The scanning software can clean up the images for you, or you can do it with a photo editing software. Make prints of the ones you want to share and display, and store the rest in a file on your hard drive.

If scanning your photos feels overwhelming, we offer a photo-scanning service. Learn more about our process and our promise to take care of your images here.