Help Removing Yellow Marks

[JSJ]

Hi guys, I've been attempting to remove the yellow marks that are all over my parents wedding photo with no success. Anyone have a clue what I could do that might help? Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Wanted to have this done for their anniversary but its not looking feasible. TIA....Brian

[HroadhogD1]

It looks good in the red channel.

[Swampy]

All the problem is in the blue channel

I first made a duplicate of the entire file in Lab Color. Copied the lightness channel from Lab and pasted it into the Blue channel of the RGB version.

Then played with levels on all the channels in RGB, and adjusted some hue/saturation.

Not my best work, but the file can be salvaged.

[Daviskw]

Hi there

I just copied the red channel to the blue then color corrected. I used a Hue/saturation to remove the green haze... and a colorburn to increase contrast in the haze areas.

Butch

[bart_hickman]

The blue channel is where the stain lives. I copied the blue channel (as a greyscale) into the layer stackup for reference. Then created a second greyscale from a combination of red and green using a channel mixer and level adjuster. I tweaked these until the combination seemed to match the original blue (sans the contamination of course). I had the original blue channel on top so I could flip back and forth between original blue and repaired blue to judge progress. Then copied this resultant repaired blue channel back into the blue channel to give an image with the original tonal range, but no stains.

Then I worked on the tonal range using the usual methods comprising neutralizing light and dark greys, saturation enhancement, noise reduction and sharpening, photo filter and so on (by "usual" methods I mean the methods from chapter 4 of Eismann's book.)

Bart

[JSJ]

Thanks for all the advice... I am going to play around with the stuff tonight sometime. I'll let you guys know how it comes out

[Gary Richardson]

I copied the green channel to an Alpha, then adjusted with levels and curves to get it as close to the blue channel as I could. Then copied it, and pasted it into the blue channel.

Then a quick colour correction with levels and curves on the whole image.

Finally ran it through Neat Image to reduce noise.

Still needs work, but I'm a bit short of time at the moment, so this is the best I could do quickly.

[Syd]

Like Swampy I used the Brightness Channel in Lab to fix the blue channel. I also used Select Color Adjustment Layers to darken some of the blacks and I used Shadow/Highlight to lighten the midtones.

Syd

[limaze]

i have a question about that images blue channel. is it really possible that the blue channel alone gets that kind of damaged, leaving the R+G more or less unharmed. it looks kind of manipulated with some "dirt" layer blended ontop.
what could possibly have happened to that picture physically to create such an effect?

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by limaze

i have a question about that images blue channel. is it really possible that the blue channel alone gets that kind of damaged, leaving the R+G more or less unharmed. it looks kind of manipulated with some "dirt" layer blended ontop.
what could possibly have happened to that picture physically to create such an effect?

The physical photo is made up of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow pigments. Damage or degradation to the yellow pigment shows up as damage to the blue channel. Too much yellow will look like too little blue and vice versa. The yellow pigment was probably more volatile or more sensitive to some spill or other event in the photo's history.

Bart

[limaze]

Originally Posted by bart_hickman

The physical photo is made up of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow pigments. Damage or degradation to the yellow pigment shows up as damage to the blue channel. Too much yellow will look like too little blue and vice versa. The yellow pigment was probably more volatile or more sensitive to some spill or other event in the photo's history.
Bart

hello bart_hickman, are you sure that also is the case if the image is old fashionably created from film in a photolab like the image above, and not only by using an inkjet printer that uses the CMYK you mentioned? what also confuses me is that the "damage" in the blue channel looks so weird, like the dust and scratches you find on very old images (in all channels). btw, thanks for answering

[DaveP]

Im no pro when it comes to this, but I thought I would add my 2 cents hehe. I messed with the curves and levels a little but I also found the colour replace tool to be quite usefull.

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by limaze

hello bart_hickman, are you sure that also is the case if the image is old fashionably created from film in a photolab like the image above, and not only by using an inkjet printer that uses the CMYK you mentioned? what also confuses me is that the "damage" in the blue channel looks so weird, like the dust and scratches you find on very old images (in all channels). btw, thanks for answering

Yes, even the old fashioned prints from drug store are made from those primary colors. I'm sure these pigments don't all react the same to sunlight or moisture, so fading and damage is often concentrated in one channel. I think even artists work with primary colors in paints.

Bart

[Flora]

Hi,

Brian,

welcome to RP!

Eliminating or replacing a channel is my very last resort ... if possible, I always try to salvage it... Like Bart, I used the Channel Mixer to that purpose ...
A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer on top of the Channel Mixer Layer gave me an acceptable result and I still had the details contained in the 'Blue Channel' ... (Attachment 2)

After that it depends on how much or how little you want to do to finish your restoration...