Removing Photos Stuck to Glass

[TommyO]

Nice work Joe ! You have shown what a bit of creativity can do. Thanks for sharing.

[resto]

Great thread lots of good info.

I used soaking in distilled water a couple of times before (after taking some good scans) to un stick photos from glass. It worked well the pics were in decent shape to begin with so it was not to bad.

I think next time I will start out trying to use steam from a humidifier before I do the soaking.

[Sweetlight]

I have to disagree with Sally on this one.
Photos are typicall born of water. Just like you can refix fading and/or yellowing b/w's you can resoak film and images.

[luddite08]

My photo that is stuck to the glass is only from the 70s. Tell me which of these would not be good to use. Quickly then neutralize somehow: GooGone, mineral oil, denatured alcohol, mayonnaise, cold cream, Windex?
I tried scanning on my HP but the result was poor.
Thanks,
Lynne

[Joe Townsend]

I have done a number of these. Before you do anything, be sure to get as good a scan through the glass as you can, as a fallback. Not sure why your scan result was poor. Be sure as much of the photo is covered by the glass as you can. The parts actually stuck tend to have a blue tone that is correctable.

I do not recommend any of the chemicals that you have mentioned, especially -- no oils and no solvents such as goo gone (photo gone!)

There is a set of articles on my blog about this. http://tinyurl.com/3vpnbjr
Soak in distilled water, if available. Add a photo wetting agent to the water (i.e., Kodak Photo-Flo Solution). Plan to soak at least 24 hours. Dry slowly. I place them in the ventilated crawl space under my house. See article mentioned.

The most recent such project was a photo printed perhaps in the 80's by a modern machine. It eventually came off the glass but but did not do as well as older photos processed in a traditional darkroom.