Need advice on faded, yellowed photo repair

[earthcharm]

Hi, I'm new here and just joined yesterday. (-: I've been working on restoring an old photo from the 1950's. I've attached a before and after photo for your review. I used a Curves adjustment layer to bring out the color; but I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of the whiteness on the left side of the photo--perhaps overexposed. I'm somewhat of a novice at this, but I've beem repairing old photos for a year now. Any suggestions on how I can get rid of the brightness on the left side of the photo? Thanks, Earthcharm

[Swampy]

I first applied Shadow/Highlight. Then selected the wall and did a selective color adjustment on 'white'. to change the color.

[earthcharm]

Thanks Swampy, it looks much better. I'll give this try at home after work tonight (-:
Earthcharm

[Liasson]

What program do you use, earthcharm? I can make suggestions if I knew what program you used.

[earthcharm]

Photoshop 7.0 - Thanks Liasson
Can't afford to upgrade right now (-:

[vbrestorer]

Here's an approach I used:

First I adjusted the colors by using Levels, and adjusted the color of each channel (R, G, and B) rather than just adjusting the composite RGB channel. I adjusted by moving the left (black) slider in each channel to where the histogram just began on the left side of the primary part of the curve. Next I did the same thing with the right (white) slider, moving it to where the histogram just began on the right side of the primary part of the curve. I did not move the middle (grey) slider.

Next, I selected the overly bright wall behind the girls. You can use any selection tool you'd like, but I used the Magic Wand in its "new selection" and then its "add to selection" mode until I had all of the parts of the wall that I wanted and excluded the spigots and bushed in front.

With the parts of the wall that I wanted selected, I created a new layer using "Layer via copy". With this new layer active, I again selected the images of the wall copied from the previous layer, set the foreground color to a dark grey (R=181, G=181, B=177), and painted the selection(s) with a brush size of 197, Mode=Normal, and paint Opacity=100%.

Finally, with both layers visible and the top layer (with only the portions of the wall in it) selected as the Active layer, I lowered that layer's Opacity until the composite wall had the darkness I wanted. In my example, the layer's opacity was set to 15%.

Though I did the above using Photoshop CS3, the functions I used should be available in the version you have.

Incidentally, to keep the image of objects abutting the image of the top layer from looking like a "cut out", you can adjust the feather of your selection tool.

In my example, I did not bother working with the selection tool's feather setting, nor did I painstakingly select all of the little parts of the wall that need to be included (around the spigots, for example) -- I was only trying to give you a quick and dirty view of the possibilities.

I hope this helps some, and good luck.

[earthcharm]

Thank you for the effort and artistic advice. I'm still working this photo and will certainly give your tasks a try. I just wish I wasn't such a perfectionist!

Earthcharm

[shanegoldberg]

Here's a quick go. I know this thread is really old now, but I was bored and thought I'd have a play.

I messed around with a few things. Shadow/highlights, CURVES (for the grass and the general white balance) and also a photo filter (give it the creamy / white) for the back wall. Restoring can be good fun especially with selective coloring techniques.