Scanned Slide Discoloration Problem

[wenco]

I am new to this forum and need some advice. I have scanned a couple of hundred slides that my father took in the late 70's during our travels around Australia. I want to create a book with these photos for him but a lot of the photos have a brown haze on them. Some are worse than others and the one I have attached would be one of the worst. I attempted Stain Removal and didn't correct it, although I may have been doing something wrong. Can someone please advise me how to fix these photos or suggest a tutorial I can follow. I have Photoshop CS.

[Flora]

Hi wenco!!

Welcome to RetouchPRO!!!

Unfortunately I've never been in that part of the world ... and not really knowing the 'real' colours I simply tried to match the yellowish center to the colour of the very thin border ... hoping to do the right thing...

Also working with PS, I used a single Levels Adjustment Layer on a loose and feathered selection of the discolored part.

Attachment 1 > the values I 'tweaked'
Attachment 2 > the end result

Hope this helps...

[mistermonday]

Hi Wenco. This problem is typical of old slides. If you check the channels you will find the damage is worst in the B, not as bad in the G, but not very noticeable in the R. I copied the background layer then Image>Apply Image and applied the R of the background to the new layer in normal mode. Then set the layer to Luminosity Blend Mode. Sample a good spot with a medium Blue color (I used the left lower edge). Add a new layer and set its blend mode to color. With a paint brush you can brush over the stained area. In the case of this slide, because the colors are only blue and white, you can just Fill the entire layer with the color.
After getting rid of the damaged are I smoothed the image slightly with noiseware and adjusted the contrast.
Regards, Murray

[wenco]

Thank you Flora, the colors you exposed are very close to the original scene. I will see how your solution works with some of the other slides.

[wenco]

Thank you Mister Monday, I will also attempt your solution on the slides that don't have too much color.

I thought this morning that maybe I shouldn't have posted my thread because there may have been a simple solution but you and Flora have both come up with ideas that I would never have thought of.

[Flora]

Thanks for your kind feedback wenco!

Originally Posted by wenco

....I thought this morning that maybe I shouldn't have posted my thread because there may have been a simple solution...

Never say that at RP... No matter how simple a solution may be, it might not always be obvious ....

The delay-in or lack-of answering posts depends on many factors (time, difficult image to fix, etc.) but it will never depend on the fact that we might think that the solution is so simple that it doesn't deserve an answer!!!

So, whenever in doubt about a procedure to follow or just 'don't know how to start' ... simply ask

**P.S. You might have to change the values in the Levels Adjustment Layer depending on size/resolution of the image you are working on.