Stained and faded

[tindog]

Greetings, my name is Richard. I have a two-fold question... I have scores of photos that were in the kind of photo album that had adhesive pages with a clear plastic overlay... they are largely ruined and orange looking... if there is a specific process for recovering these I would love to know it... I've done fairly well, but I know it can be done better.

But, I have some that actually have stain marks, I've tried cloning from other areas but it never looks fantastic. I'll post one that has been a particular problem. I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

[Britsdad]

Welcome tindog,

You don't say what program you are using, these are done with Photoshop.

The building is the worst of the two, as you can see from the attachment all I did was to add a levels layer and set the black and grey points as shown then selected the sky and added a selective colour adjustment to alter the whites to change the sky from green to blue, then added a hue sat layer targeting the yellows and altered them as shown to get rid of the stain.

The soldier was much easier, just add a levels layer, set the black and grey points as shown, that shifts all the orange tint.
Then, just because it looked better, I used the colour replacement tool to add some colour into the bush.

Hope this helps a little.....John

[jazfrench]

Quickest way to rectify this in photoshop is use the Color Replacement brush. It's a cross between the clone and brush tools - you can pick the area/colour you're replicating from but you just brush over the problem area.
The secret to getting accurate colours is to keep repicking colours from an area that is the closest colour match to what you are trying to achieve - so keep repicking constantly.

[tindog]

I am amazed and impressed, I clearly haven't a clue what I'm doing. I don't have Photoshop, it's a tad pricey for me... I'm using Photoscape, Paint.net, and sometimes MS Paint. I would not have thought that stain could come out that well, either example is amazing. Thanks. I'll play with the color points and such and see if I can duplicate the effect you got, and learn the color replacement brush tool.

[Britsdad]

tindog,

I've never used Photoscape, however, I have used The Gimp it's free to download and is a powerful tool.
There are people on here far more adept with it than I, but here's a quick try at your building with it.

John

[tindog]

Oh, very nice, thanx! I saw something called Gimp when I downloaded Paint.net, but did not know what it was. I'll check it out.

[jazfrench]

If you don't mind paying a little bit Photoshop Elements has pretty much all the features you'll need for restoring and retouching pictures, as well as graphics. Worth it in my opinion!

[tindog]

I'm still having problems figuring out how to get these stains out of my pix. Britsdad said, "I added a selective colour adjustment to alter the whites to change the sky from green to blue, then added a hue sat layer targeting the yellows and altered them as shown to get rid of the stain"... the setting of the white, black and gray points I sort of get, but I can't figure out how to do the selective color adjustment... in the hue/saturation area, I can see how you could target a specific color, but I just can't seem to make it eliminate the specific color of the stain. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Again, unfortunately, I'm not using PE, I'm using GIMP.

[Britsdad]

tindog

I'll download gimp now and have another go to see if I can explain better.
I'll post later when I've done

John

[Britsdad]

tindog,

Just been playing ;o)
I think the screen prints show most of what I did in Gimp, if you don't follow give me a shout.
Oh, and from what I can see there is no selective colour adjustment in Gimp.

John

[Britsdad]

And here's the soldier........

[tindog]

Very nice, thanx, I'll give this a go... I have so many of these, I just want to get a formula down...