Here's a link to a photo that has a red channel problem. http://tinyurl.com/9hr8f This is the Rootschat Genealogy website where people are researching their family historys. I have seen this problem solved before on retouchPRO but I don't think I could tackle it with much confidance.

I hope someone can help this person with their picture.

cheers

deadants

Here is my rough cut...

Hi,

deadants,

this is what I managed to do ...

tb5821,

... yes, a bit rough but definitely in the right direction! :classic:

Wow Flora, you never cease to amaze me. I will direct Sandie to this page so she can see what you guys have accomplished. I certainly would love to know how you arrived at the solution to this problem. I know I've seen this on RetouchPRO somewhere but a good step by step would be much appreciated.

tb5821, I was getting a similar result but there is a problem merging the gradient in the red that has me stumped.

deadants

Hi,

deadants,

this is what I managed to do ...

tb5821,

... yes, a bit rough but definitely in the right direction! :classic:

Flora, can you post some details on how you achieved what you did...thanks

Excellent job Flora. I roughly selected the problem in the Red channel, then worked back and forth on both sides in RGB matching numbers as best as I could and fine tuning with Selective Colors, Hue Saturation and a bit of coloring in Color mode.

Cheers
Dave

This has just taken me far too long to do.
I understand the theory which is
Make a loose selection around the area then adjust hue/saturation sliders

The trouble is that I don’t know which slider to adjust or in which direction. I don’t even know what colour I should be adjusting.

I try using the eyedropper on good and bad areas. And I’ve even tried changing the eyedropper to HSL however nothing seems to help me get the correct values.

I’ve been told that even colour blind people can become good at correcting by the numbers. So there has to be a way that this can be done.

Duv. You mention doing it by the numbers. How do you do it?

Ken

Hi Ken

There's lot's of different ways to tackle the problem. Hopefully Flora will weight in with her methodology.
After I made the selection in Red Channel I converted back to RGB. I made 2 assumptions, that the wall was more or less white and the woman's stripped outfit was white and black. I put a sampler on the contaminated wall and another on a contaminated black stripe. I then noted readings on the good wall and good part of the dress.
Rather than trying to work the curves all in one go, you might have better success matching the highlight values, flattening image then a new curves adjustment for the shadows.
With my adjustments I lost virtually all red color in the baby's outfit and part of the girls sweater so I just cloned the color back in.
The only other thing I did was to select each girl's face individually and reduced the Cyan as well as tweaking the Magenta and Yellow. Here's another correction that I did.
Hopes this helps some.

Dave

I remember Katrin Esimann's book have a case just like this, you can get her book named retouching and restoration, I ll put a cololr layer to to balance the white, and handle face, shirts, kids in different layers. I didn't do it right now, but I ll give a go later, Floria always give us something amazing,


realaqu

ok, I finished my work.

Thanks Duv and Realaqu.

I’ve tried to ask Flora how to do this and she can do it by eye
I’ll bet she corrected this picture in one Hue/Sat adjustment layer with a layer mask
I don’t think Flora can even see the problem I’m having (Some people are just born gifted)

Obviously the left side of this picture is too red and I can handle that with levels and a graduated mask (to some extent)

It’s the final bit of magic that Flora can do that I’m missing.

I understand how to correct the black and white points (I get a bit lost with the midtones)

My picture seems to be missing some green. But I could not increase that using levels
Because I was at the end of the Adjust.
So I go to Hue/Saturation then I get lost as the eyedropper even in HSL does not seem to give me any numbers that mean anything. In fact in this picture, when I matched the HSL values from the right side of the picture to the left side the picture became black and white.

Should I colour correct the right side of the picture first or match the left side to the right side first?

Ken

I was wondering if there is any way of doing a gradient mask, then adjusting HSL.

yes, I use a gradient mask, because the original red channel is damaged, so I copied part of the green channel on top layer to fake some details, but I don't need entire layer, so I use a gradient mask to show throught the good parts of the original photo, and set this layer to luminosity. after that do regular color correction work, I handle shirts, heads hair seperately. I don't know how to handle those stuffs on top left, seems a colouring job is a must in this case.


wondering how Floria do this part as well.

realaqu

Hi,

sorry, sorry for getting back so late .... :o:

Thank you everybody for your kind words ... :blush: :blush: :blush:

Yep!! .... as I've said lot of times there isn't much love lost between 'numbers' and I .... :rolleyes: :confused: :rolleyes: ... so, please, don't be mad at me if I don't react when somebody asks for numbers ... I simply don't know ....

I move the sliders until it 'looks' OK and I share the values that led me to the results ... but calculations or percentages .. are surrounded by a thick fog ....

No Hue/Saturation here :wink: ...for this picture I used two Color Balance Adjustment Layers ... one for the left part of the picture (the bad one) and one for the right part of it ... The most important factor in both ALs are the Layer masks which you can see in attachment 1

The 'values' of Color Balance1 are in attachment 2 and Color Balance2 in attachment 3 .....

After this I added a blank Layer set to Color to correct the parts that still had some cast 'leftover' and selectively used Levels and Selective Colors ALs to correct tone, contrast and adjust colours ....

P.S. deadants, ... I followed your link (thank you so much for your kindness!) and read Sandie's reply ... :confused: Have you someone named Flora on your site? ... because I never sent anything to her ....

Hi,
P.S. deadants, ... I followed your link (thank you so much for your kindness!) and read Sandie's reply ... :confused: Have you someone named Flora on your site? ... because I never sent anything to her ....

Hi Flora,
Well i'm scratching my head in confusion. I will send her a PM asking her what's going on. I hope she's not being conned by some fly by night merchant.

I have one more of thes darn red channel disastors which I came across yesterday. It was a slide my grandfather took back in in the early 60's of Nobbys beach in Newcastle. My sister was sorting the photos and we debated wether to trash it or not. But I thought it might be useful as a restoration exercise. Plus it's a record of Nobbys beach which although it still looks much the same today you just don't see cars like that anymore.

I will try your method and see how I go.

Hi Flora,
Well i'm scratching my head in confusion. I will send her a PM asking her what's going on. I hope she's not being conned by some fly by night merchant.Hi deadants,

That was/is actually my fear reading in her post: "Flora beat me to it and sent me a PM..."...Please, tell her that whoever contacted her using my name is not me!! ...

I have one more of thes darn red channel disastors which I came across yesterday. It was a slide my grandfather took back in in the early 60's of Nobbys beach in Newcastle. My sister was sorting the photos and we debated wether to trash it or not. But I thought it might be useful as a restoration exercise. Plus it's a record of Nobbys beach which although it still looks much the same today you just don't see cars like that anymore.

I will try your method and see how I go.

...I'll try it as well .... I did some work on very old slides for my husband ... boy, they aren't easy to fix!!!

Deadants
Apologies if I’ve butted in. But I thought if I post first then Flora might comment

Ken.

Gee Ken, that was quick. Did you use Floras method or do you have your own secret method. ;) I have been trying to duplicate Floras settings but I just can't seem to get it quit right. But I think I'm on te right trak. I just need more practice.

nice job, ken. almost makes me want to throw my attempt away.

but i wont :)

this was the strangest success i think i've ever gotten and would have never thought to do this this way. it was one of those sort of happy little accidents. and when i explain this, you'll see what i mean.

duplicate layer.
made mask on this layer based on luminosity.
edited a gradient fill with a similar blue to the background to go from left to right, dark to fading.
flood filled on masked layer 3 times.
used fast fix to balance colors a bit more
duplicated that layer 4 times (with the mask)
used fast fix on last layer for final correction
made a copy on the clipboard of all images combined and made a new image from it.
sharpen more on new image

it still needs adjusting to the original color, but it is sort of an interesting technique.

Craig

Hi Ken, looks like you've done a paint job on this one. It's the way I'd have done it. A bit more care on the rails, and it would have been harder to spot, also a bit of the beach under the headland.

Hi Ken,
I reduced your version down in size an ran neat image to clean it up a bit when I noticed you have filled Newcastle harbour with sand. :lol:

Gary spotted how I did it. If you just use a brush set to colour you can soon paint back any colours I got wrong.


Ken.

Hi everybody,

Ken,

was it meant as a test for me? :wink: .... Beside the railings, you had forgotten to paint the 'boulders' and the last two cars in the bottom left corner ...

After working on the picture myself, I had one more 'proof' that yours had been painted ... while the beach on this side of the boulders kept a 'yellowy' tinge throughout the corrections, there was no way you could get whatever is on the others side of the boulders (from deadants reply now I know it's 'Newcastle harbour') the colour you did without colouring it ... :wink:

Just in case your interested, this is Nobbys beach today.

Wow, deadants .... it's breathtaking ....

I've been to Newcastle loads of times, and never seen a beach like that. Met loads of Geordies speaking incomprehensible English, but never seen a beach.
Oops, wrong Newcastle. :dizzy: :grin: :grin:

Whey aye, man, wrong hemisphere even. ;)

Flora,

After seeing what you managed to do with my photograph I was lost for words. It is absolutely brilliant!

This picture is very dear to me and I really cannot find the words to show my appreciation.

Thank you so much.

Regards
Sandie

Hi Sandie,

Welcome to RP! :pleased:

Thank you so much for your kindness and feedback!

So glad we could help...

P.S. ... Wow! ... What a great 4-generations picture!

This thread is a great exercise for color cast photos.

Flora, once again your Photoshop skills astound us.

We had a try at the first image here. Very challenging indeed.