[albatrosss]

I haven't the faintest idea of where to begin. Tried Lab color, CMYK method and a bunch of other tools but I'm just trying things at random. A while ago I seem to remember a similar problem but a search didn't help at all. Went through a couple of texts, same result.

Can anyone get me started or refer me to a tutorial, or something, that would be of value? Can this be restored is obviously the first question? I'm sure it can be but I just don't know where to begin.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks

[Swampy]

So many things going on in that photo, I wouldn't know where to begin either!

[albatrosss]

Swampy,

If you are stumped than I will assume it's a lost cause.

What I did do after posting was change it to black and white. With some tweaking it came out pretty decent. Then I started to hand paint it and I'm getting to like it even more. Later I will start from scratch with the b/w and spend a little more time coloring.

Thanks for your input. Believe it or not it really helped.

[Swampy]

That's not to say it can't be done, but it's certainly beyound my ability.

[madclark]

I can give you a decent B&W. Not ideal but the problem is you have areas from two channels blown out in different sections. Normally you could use a channel mixer to try to restore part of a single channel but I don't think that will work here.

You need to do separate channel mix layers - one for the green channel and one for the red. You'll mix in 100% of the blue channel for each but you'll mask out everything except for the faded areas of each channel with a gradient.

Then you can just use a Levels layer to restore the correct tone.

That's the only thing I can think of.

[Kraellin]

you've got 3 major areas in this image, the far right which is actually almost original colors, the middle, which is the largest of the 3, and the far left, which is quite yellow. you have to treat these as separate images, almost, and then get them to match up as best you can. so, you're going to use either selections or masks.

the trick is that they fade into each other on a gradient, so, as i recall, flora used a gradient mask or selection. she's much better at these than i am. and she then used color correction tools like hue/sat and color balance.

i've done these before with Paint Shop Pro,but never quite satisfactorily, but i've got Photoshop now and so i'm just learning this all over again. also, since the retouch and restoration forums got separated out, you might try searching the retouch forum or even the image help forum for those images that flora worked on. i know they're around here somewhere.

i can get the middle one in decent shape fairly easily and the right one, but getting that feather just right is a b...h. and the far left one, the yellow one has some real color loss, so keeping integrity to the image while getting back the color is a bit of a pain also.

if you find those helps from flora, post the link(s) here. i know there's more than one. i even remember what one of them looked like, but i'll be damned if i can remember the names

[tinamou]

Hi,

This is how far I got in about 10 minutes. I dont know if its what you were looking for as the left hand side is still blown but the colors have come out on it and the red tint has certainly gone.

IF you want to know the details on teh method i used for it then Just ask and I will gladly run you through it.

Tinamou

[Lasa]

I didn't even try correcting the yellow..the yellow caste is harder doesn't seem to have that much information.. anyway what try:
Neutralizing the middle caste with the SELECTIVE COLOR adjustment...moving the RED (add cyan reduce magenta) and MAGENTA (incease cyan and deduce magenta)

Hope this can help you get started...if I have time I'll roll up my sleeves and take a look at the yellow...

Lasa

[albatrosss]

I gave up after Swampy indicated that it was beyond her expertise. If she couldn't do it then I would never even attempt it.

What I did do, however, was change to black and white and then tried to improve the image. I then hand colored it.

This is not yet completed but almost there. Thought that you might be interested.

[bpm]

i had a quick color try on it.i hope this helps.anyway,a lot of work if you really want to get back those detail

[Swampy]

Albatrosss...

Great job on the colorization.

As I think about it now, in CS3, where layer blends are so easy, one might be able to divide the original into it's "color problem sections" and correct as separate files, then bring them back into a single file using CS3's Align Layer, Blend layer. It would still be a lot of work.

[Lasa]

Nice job Albatrosss..probably easier then trying to color correct.
lasa