Old slide restoration

[kinetix]

I'm new to this forum so this is my first post. I have an old family slide that has special meaning to my wife as it shows her as a young girl with her mom at the mom's graduation. It's very underexposed so you can't see the cap and gown and has a heavy color cast that makes me think it was shot on indoor film. I'm not looking for someone to fix it but would appreciate any advice or suggestions. I use CS4 and though I shoot a lot, I don't have much experience in restoring images such as this. I've attached a small image but am going to get a high res scan to work with once I figure out what to do. I realize that it may not be possible to get a good really good image. Any direction is appreciated.

thanks,

Doug

[mistermonday]

Hi Doug and welcome to RetouchPro!
The G and B channels are in pretty good shape but the R is severely degraded. You can use apply image or calculations to brighten it. Alternately a Levels adj to it will help. You could also improve it by using a Channel Mixer adj layer to replace it with the G and B channels. Once you improve the R channel the image will come within range of the regular correction tools for the image (levels, curves, blend modes etc).
One thing that is very important when restoring and old slide is too get the absolutely best scan that you can. If you have a good quality scanner with a high dynamic range you can get every ounce of detail from it which will make retouching much easier and more successful. The scan should be high res (2400 to 4000 dpi for a 35 mm slide). The scan should be made with all Auto functions disabled and the scanner output should be save as a TIFF or PSD but not as a jpg. If you do not have the equipment, you can have a professional lab or scanning service scan one for you for at reasonable charge.
Good luck with your restoration.
Regards, Murray

[Tony W]

Hi Doug
As Murray says the Red channel is in a bit of a state! I wonder if the new scan will regain some of the loss seen in this one.

Had a quick play and came up with the following

1. Copied background and Apply Image Green Channel @100% Normal

2. Modified density and contrast to the B&W image prior to changing layer to luminosity mode

3. Curves layer to adjust to get as good an image as possible without obvious colour casts

4. Convert to Lab and adjust a and b channels steeply to drive colour into image. Reduce layer opacity to taste then convert back to RGB.

5. Conversion left a little too much magenta in certain areas of the fleshtones, which was corrected by a Hue and Saturation layer desat. of magenta

Sounds more complicated and time consuming than it is - literally takes a few minutes

[kinetix]

Thanks for the feedback Murray and Tony. I'm getting a high res scan done in tiff format this coming week and will start to play with it after that. I'll let you know how it goes. Doug

[0lBaldy]

Doug, I used your pic as an example of color correction just using an underwater action in this thread

[Crapaud]

Hi, folks. I've been lurking for a while, but this is my debut post - if there's an intro area I haven't found it (it's big in here!).

Anyway, this is a type of image that I like to work on, so gave it a go.

I tried a couple of approaches, mainly blends (calculations) and Lab to control the blue, but none were really satisfactory. I managed to create one that was a bit red, but had a little contrast between the mortarboard and trees, so used this as a basis for adjustment layers (curves, selective colour, hue saturation)for tweaking the colour and to try and force some more contrast.

I couldn't eliminate the blue entirely from the figures so cheated and painted in the skin and dress, sponged the socks, shoes, bag and gloves on desaturate. The painting isn't perfect and the colours need adjusted, but as a proof of concept, it works.

Mistermonday, great result. Now that I know what's possible with blends and the channel mixer I'll revisit it when I've time.

[kinetix]

That's pretty amazing what you all are able to do with this. I'm picking up a higher res scan tomorrow and maybe I can replicate the results. thanks, Doug