When Nathen Steffel’s daughter died, the only photos he had of his baby girl showed her hooked up to tubes in a hospital bed. At least until he took to the Internet for help.

Now, the grieving Ohio father is extending a big thank you to the online community for doctoring a hospital photo and giving him with beautiful portraits of his late daughter.

“Everyone you have made my day,” Steffel wrote on Reddit, where he posted the original picture of his daughter on the weekend.

“This is really amazing.”

Steffel’s daughter, Sophia, was just six weeks old when she passed away from a liver tumour, USA Today reported.

In his original post, Steffel wrote that his daughter was in a children’s hospital her whole life, and so “we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes.”





The post garnered nearly 3,000 responses from the Reddit community, many from users who used photo editing software to remove the tubes and recalibrate the colour of the original picture.

The top-voted submission came from a user named funkybrewster, which shows the baby without tubes lying on a white bed sheet, with the hospital equipment behind replaced by a white background.

“I’m honoured that people like my work,” the user wrote.

Another user posted a sketch of the baby, while other users discussed charities that send photographers to capture images of infants in hospital before and after they pass away.

“All I wanted was a nice picture,” Steffel wrote in response to the flood of posts and photoshopped submissions.

“What I received was a lot of love and support from a bunch of strangers. Along with a lot of great photos, drawings and paintings. Thanks everyone!”