Advice needed on removing irregular color fading

[dannyxu]

One of my wife's old photos has this irregular yellow color all over and I'm at loss as to how to remove it. I appreciate your experience and advice on that. Thanks!

[mistermonday]

Danny, welcome to RetouchPro!
Duplicate the background. In any version of PS, go to the image menu and Image>Apply Image and choose Background as the layer and Green as the Channel, opacity 100%, Blend Mode Normal, OK. The resulting layer will be black & white. Change the blend mode of that layer to Luminosity. You will now have a clean image from a luminosity perspective. All you need to do is add a blank layer on top, change the blend mode to Color. Now with a paint brush, sample good / correct color and paint over the areas that have the wrong color. Even the green spots will disappear.
Small sample below took about 2 mins.
Regards, Murray

[chillin]

You could use couple of targeted curves layers, some fine tuning with HSL & levels adjustments.

[Daviskw]

Here is a 10 minute go...certainly not perfect... If you desaturate you will find the luminosity of the picture is not affected...only the color.

This means you can just use blank layers set to color...sample or estimate good color and paint over the yellow.

Butch

[Kraellin]

chillin, i like the way you animated your example. great idea going through the layers!

[chillin]

Thanks. The only disadvantage is the limited file size allowable that forced me to cut the pic up & make it smaller for posting.

[dannyxu]

Wow, so much help! I really appreciate that! Now I'm going to try each of the methods offered. I don't have a quick hand, so it will take me some time to get a result and come back to thank you again.

[dannyxu]

Viola! I got a result, which is, though not entirely satisfactory with respect to the color of the clouds, quite acceptable to me and would be a pleasant surprise to my wife.

I used a combination of blank layer in color mode and adjustments in curves (with color selection).

Big thanks to Mistermonday, Chillin and Daviskw for their advices.