not sure how far this picture can go

[paulus]

Hi everybody,

I've been given a ropey load of polaroids all with colour shifts of my mums childhood - early sixties possibly we're not sure

Anyway I'm not sure what is possible with the picture
Also what I've done with it is any good or not
- I've not worked on Polaroids before

Any pointers would be great.

Many thanks in advance
Cheers

[mistermonday]

The Polaroids I had never did have strong colors to begin with. This one is pretty weak. On this image I would tend to get rid of the cast which will leave the image looking pretty monochromatic. You can then clean it up and re-color it manually if you prefer.
Regards, Murray

[paulus]

Thanks Murray,

I feared that would be the case - I was hoping there was a magic technique to restore them.

This is actually one of the better photos condition wise - some look completely green!

Thanks again
Paul

[Tony W]

Just wanted to try this as a challenge and got a little carried away . Played about correcting curves in RGB. Converted to LAB to force what colour I could find apart. Corrected some magenta cast (can still be seen on this). Then went OTT on sharpening the L channel - it looked ok until I saved for web - honest!! I also made some assumption that the house is red brick !

[Cupcake]

The easy way is to make it a B&W.

[Kraellin]

i like that, tony w. you've removed most of the bad tinting, giving us back a blue sky, red house and mostly white snow, all of which can be seen in the original, though badly faded.

i also suspect this photo was not taken correctly to begin with. it looks like maybe it was a bit under-exposed.

[paulus]

I can't get anywhere near the excellent lab version above.

This is the best I could manage - I'll have to read up about lab colour as I've never used it

Cheers
Paul

[Rikard Rodin]

Here's an attempted fix using a bunch of layering and curves, but no brushing.

[paulus]

Having seen the excellent version with curves - I thought I'd have a go with just adjustment layers and no re-colouring.

Its a bit sloppy in parts got carried and before I knew it was very late.
I know now a lot more about curves, levels and channels!

Cheers
Paul

[Kraellin]

i had a go also.

channel mixer for the major color correction. then, color balance to bring it further along. but, it still wasnt enough, so i treated this like a colorizing of a black and white and started adding blank layers with single colors of airbrush to various parts of the image. oh, and i ran a noise reduction just before this.

i painted one color per layer and used blend modes to get it better. in some cases i'd guassian blur the 'paint' then erase the overflow bits. so, one layer for the brick, one for the green brushery, one for the white snow on the ground, one for the tree, one for the roof, one for the sky and so on. the blend modes help keep it from looking like it was painted so much. i paint with a very light opacity brush, like 1, 2 or 3 and usually no more than that. and certain blend modes also allow bottom layer textures to come through.

now, i didnt do it, and i dont recommend it for an archival copy, but i'd consider cropping some of the bottom off this one to bring the image more into the forefront.