This badly discolored snapshot of my mother was taken in the 1950s. I've been fighting with it for years, literally, trying to get the colors back to something resembling normal. It's not a good photo - never was - but it's my Mom! The second image is my own latest best effort - still a long way from good. Surely some of you can tell me how to do better with that awful magenta shift. Michael (Graphic23)?

Carole

Lurch!!

I'm happy to offer the following that I picked up from a book somewhere. It works for almost any sort of color cast.

I made a copy of you photo. Using the copy I went to Filter-Blur-Average. What you'll have is a pink picture :) Go back to the original and do a Levels adjustment. Do the white and black adjustments as normal. Click on the middle dropper - the gray one - and click on your pink picture. About 75% of the pink vanished for me..

Did a Ctrl/shift/alt E and made a new level with the changes. Used the Auto Color filter. Finished up with a green (the opposite of red on the color wheel) photo filter at 30%.

I'm sure that someone who knows what they're doing will have some suggestions to refine it more. I still see pink but a lot of it is gone?

Cheers,

MJ

Well I tried to correct the picture but I still see the wrong one. I think my mind is failing :)

Thanks, MJ. That's an approach I hadn't tried in all this time, and it makes a significant improvement with little effort.

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It is a very difficult picture. I had to rely heavily on the iCorrect PictoColor plugin. First I applied Charlene5's method, then played with plug ins & a patching tool.

That came out very nice, Chillin. I wish I could remember what color those walls were. I do know the piano was a wood finish that they called 'blond' then.

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...I do know the piano was a wood finish that they called 'blond' then.

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Maybe something like that.

I like that color a lot, but the your original effort was very much like what I remember the piano being. Sorry if my words implied you hadn't got it right - you had!

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Seems that the walls are the same colour as you mother's skin.

This is one of those that would be easier just to paint the colours in, rather than trying to "fix" them.

Rô

Dear Carole,

I fiddled with your mom some more - well not with her, but her magenta rendering- and reached the point of diminishing returns. Instead of folding the laundry (it can wait) I colorized your mom with a memorable 50's color scheme. If you look closely you'll see one of those "modern atomic" patterns on the lovely <cough> aqua blue curtains. We had those AND a pink wall and some of the most hideous wallpaper I've ever clapped eyes on. I'm sure it's in the background of some Christmas pictures. I'll have to post it for you to enjoy :)

Anyhow, here's your Mom back snug in the 50's. I enjoyed doing it!

MJ

Hi Carole!

Sorry to be jumping in so late in the game. But you posted just after my play time was over yesterday. :grin:

Here's my first take. This was done with a curves adjustment layer. I was able to get reasonable skin tone and seem to have found the blond wood tone you mention. If you like I'll save the curves settings and send them to you.

This is a tricky one. The color cast is not consistent from shadow to highlight. I seem to be introducing a green tinge which I don't like. Was there a lot of green in the room? Is that a Christmas tree to the right?

I'll take another crack at it tonight. However, I think you should consider rescanning the original. There's very little detail in the dress, it's pretty much completely plugged.

You should be able to compensate for the color cast and retain far more shadow detail with a better scan. Don't try to make a scan that faithfully reproduces the original. Play with the scanner settings and leave some room at the endpoints, particularly in the shadows. Also, a little shift of the blue channel midpoint should help kill the yellow cast.

Chillin: great job. That plugin really seems to help.

Best regards,

Michael

I forgot to mention, scan in 16-bit then apply your curves. Once you've established full range and correct color you can convert to 8-bit to repair the damage.

Good luck,

Michael

Don't really know what I did but I took quite a few liberties. Did mostly with curves and Hue and Saturation.

Rô - This is one of those that would be easier just to paint the colours in, rather than trying to "fix" them. That had crossed my mind . . . but I've got this bulldog streak in me. Thanks for looking at the image, for your tweaks, and for your advice. May well just go that route in the end.

MJ - Charming 50s portrait! Have you seen where Formica is now releasing a 'retro' boomerang laminate pattern? And we thought we'd seen the last of that stuff.

Michael - This is a tricky one. Yup.

I had tried curves in just about every color space. Yours got good skin, and the piano, but I don't remember the walls being that dark. I had the same problem with the green cast. Look forward to more of your magic.

I will go back and re-scan the photo. 'Fraid that dress is just as plugged in the original, however, thanks to teenage Brownie flash high-contrast photography technique.

albatross - Nice. Wish you could remember how you got there. Walls may be more saturated than I remember, but when compromises have to be made they're not the important part of the image.

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That's a better place to start....

I can't stop playing with this picture! I took Manta's improvement and did some selective color stuff with the yellow and red channels. I used my memory of "blonde" furniture to try and get it right. I think the real wall color is hiding just below the mirror.

Cheers,
MJ

I just arbitrarily used that color for the walls. I could have used quite a few others. Also, had I read the posts carefully I would have given the piano a "blond" look. Blond furniture I grew up with.

I think that my first step was to use the RGB in Levels. From there I selected various parts of the photo and used Curves to adjust the colors. Then I went to Hue and Saturation playing around with the various combinations. It really didn't take that long................maybe half and hour.

Here's my second take.

I did some channel blends to get rid of that green tinge and balance color overall, the inverted channel move to lighten things a little, and a tiny bit of healing and cloning.

She's a pretty lady, Carole. :)

Did you try a new scan?

Regards,

Michael

Great job, Michael. Could you tell me more about the channel blends you used? That's an area where I'm still flailing around.

Haven't done a new scan yet - the original print is hiding somewhere :)

She's a pretty lady, Carole. Yes, she was a beauty - stayed that way into her 70s to the day she died.

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Here's mine....:wink:

Great job, Michael. Could you tell me more about the channel blends you used? That's an area where I'm still flailing around.

Rather than take over this thread with a discussion of channel blending I'll put together a full tutorial.

But to answer your question, I started by merging all my working layers to the top (stamp visible; Ctrl Alt Shft E), then used Image>Apply Image.

In this specific case I wanted to knock out a green tinge. For a pixel to be green it must be lightest in the green channel. So you inspect the channels to see which channel has some darker pixels in the area in question. Then use Apply Image to blend that channel into the green, using a blend mode such as Darken or Multiply.

In addition, you can further control the effect with the blend mode of the working layer. So if you introduce a color shift, simply set the layer to Luminosity. Or if you cause an undesirable change to contrast, set the layer to Color.

PM me with your email and I'll send you the working file and edit log.

Regards,

Michael

Mchilly - Cool frame!

Michael - A good channel blending tutorial would be a service to mankind! Meanwhile you've given me something to work with. And a PM is on its way.

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I used a curves adjustment layer and used the gray eyedropper on the curtains. Next in photoshop I used Image/Adjustments/variations to adjust the color. I used neat image to decrease the grain.

thought i would give this a try. used levels adjustment on each channel starting with the green channel then used hue saturation layer to remove more of the green cast, which came from removing the red cast from the original. then noiseware default levels.

philbach - I like the saturation you got; that's something that's escaped my efforts . . .

unimatrix - Your color range is great. Every recent try I end up with nothing but several varieties of red (even the green Christmas Carols book).

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First, many thanks to all who took a crack at fixing up my purple Mom. I think I've tried every technique suggested and then some. Finally had to just set it aside for a while to cool off, as it were.

Tackled the job again today, and got as far as I'm going to go with it. The result was pretty good, so I thought I should share it with my consultant crew. Here's what I did . . .

First job was to get that magenta cast under control by replacing the green channel with the L from an Lab copy. (Thanks, Michael) Then a curves adjustment layer to set white and black points. Then a second curves layer to get magenta and yellow balanced in skin tone, this with a layer mask based on a drastically curved version of the yellow channel from a cmyk copy. This left too much cyan in the light areas, so next step was a selective color layer that reduced cyan in the 'whites'. I was all ready with a layer mask for that step, but didn't need one. Green in the carol book and tree was still way off, so I adjusted that in a hue/sat layer with a hide all mask, painting the green bits back in with white. Then a touchup layer. Merged visible to a new layer, ran a minimal dust and scratches, and sharpened.

Thanks to what I learned from you all, it all got done in six layers and about an hour. You're the greatest!

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You did an absolutely fantastic job! Thanks for the update.

MJ

What a challange!! some of the quality lost in the compression...

I had a go at this as well.

Thanks to what I learned from you all, it all got done in six layers and about an hour. You're the greatest!

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Very well done, Carole!

This was no easy project.

You were able to bring back quite a bit of detail and the colors look great.

That channel move was an excellent idea. There's actually quite a strong relationship between the Green channel of RGB and the Lightness channel of LAB. Good thinking!

Very good use of the Ten Channels overall!

Thanks for sharing.

Best regards,

Michael