Seeking help to correct colors

[paultjack]

Hi All,

I've been a member for a while although I've been mostly a reader. My motorcycle projects have had me quite busy since I've joined and my digital photography has suffered greatly because of that.

For friends and family I like to restore photos and I think I do a pretty good job at fixing the scratches, tears and such. But, to be honest I'm partialy color blind and I have a horrific time correcting the colors. As long as the photo is not too far off I can usually do some color touch-up and contrast adjustments.

However, I have a photo I restored, but the colors were horribly faded. I've tried my best but I just can't get the colors correct. Seriously, I could use some major help fixing these colors. I can tell they are over saturated but since working with colors is such a difficult thing for me I'm really stuck getting this fixed. It's just beyond my capabilities.

For photo editing I've been using Paint Shop Pro and now that my laptop crashed I loaded Linux on it so I've only got GIMP to work with.

If someone could correct this photo and point me in the correct direction on what you did that would be awesome!

Click here for the Full Sized Image

[Tareq]

Difficult but this is my best so far, it could be better but not me who can do it better.

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/1...825aec21do.jpg

[philbach]

It looks like your linked photos have had much work already done to them. To get better advice why don't you post the original, unretouched photo here.
To post photos here look at this link:http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...ads-posts.html

This photo looks colorized and the background looks replaced.

[paultjack]

Yup, I did about as much work as possible. the original image was in horrific shape, faded inconsistantly across the image, tears, stains, holes... I had to redraw bits and pieces. The original image was much larger than my scanner and I had to scan it in several passes and piece it together. I started on the image last October and got stumped on the color portion. The skin tones were killing me. Being partially color blind has made fixing this photo a real problem.

I'll have to check if I have an original scan though. I think I have several versions of progression so hopefully I can find that and then post it later tonight.

Thanks all for your help.

[paultjack]

OK, here's the original full sized image that I scanned in. It's actually two images that were merged. I'm attaching a MUCH reduced sized image seeing that there's just a 100K upload limit.

Original Large Sized Image

[crazyfly1]

Paultjack, I'm old so forgive me but I don't get it. The origional was 2 photos merged? Or do you mean you scanned the same image twice and then blended them?

[paultjack]

The original photo was larger than my scanner. I had to scan the left and right side of the image and then merge them together. This is the worst photo to restore I've had to work on yet.

[crazyfly1]

Oh OK I get it. Here is my try.

[0lBaldy]

I don't use PSP so no advise here for you..
Just thought I would give it a try with a lot of trial and error on my part and like you... I was just guessing on the colors.. below is a conglomeration of a lot of layers, masks, color corrections, levels, curves, etc.. with no particular work flow

[Flashtones]

What the heck. My try.

[crazyfly1]

Nice colors Flashtones. The blue background is a nice touch.

[Dave.Cox]

Here is my quick go at this. This is mostly levels adjustment, and a quick repair of the damaged areas. I prefer to keep this kind of photos as close to the original with out adding my own interpretation to it as much as possible.

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by crazyfly1

Nice colors Flashtones. The blue background is a nice touch.

Thanks, crazy. This was actually my first concerted effort at a restoration type project. I found getting believable hair to be quite challenging, especially the blond color. I guess less saturation is the way to go?

[philbach]

Well I started from the original and like others there were a lot of steps. I did not replace the background but cleaned it up some. I also cloned some fabric on the boy's right arm

[paultjack]

Thanks all for your input and efforts! I really do know how much work it is to try and correct this photo. It's been bugging me for a while that I couldn't find the right combinations of adjustments. So far I'm leaning towards the coloring Flashtones has provided. I like his skin tones. I'll try and emulate that with my larger photo now that I have something to compare.

Most adjustments I tried led me to feel like the photo was a Rotoscope. Without any real detail in the skin everything ends up looking chartoonish. I might try to apply some skin texture to the images to see if that improves the look a little too.

This photo has been a real pain for me and I really appreciate all of the efforts you've put into it helping me.

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by paultjack

So far I'm leaning towards the coloring Flashtones has provided. I like his skin tones. I'll try and emulate that with my larger photo now that I have something to compare.

Thanks. What you might want to do is open my image in PS, eyedropper sample my skin tones, and either save it as a patch or just note the RGB numbers, and use that color on your image. (I applied it to it's own layer in "Color" blend mode.) I also added a little red to the cheeks and lips for depth. I also put some effort into adding density to the top left of the leftmost person's head, as well as to faded areas at the bottom of the photo.

[Nan]

I took a shot at this one. I need the practice. Used a lot of levels adjustments, desaturated just the faces and then painted the skin colors back in. Painted the hair and touched up the background. Sharpened a little and cloned the bad spots on the jacket. The neck shadows look bad. I can't figure out what to do with those.
Nan

[paultjack]

OK, I went back and attempted some more rework. Five hours later I'm saying I'm done. I'm not happy with the arms and some of the color cast in the shadows, but I'm beat and there comes a time when I need to just move on to something else...

Anyway, here's my final result. I'd love to hear your comments on it and I'm still interested in what others can do with this photo. This honestly was the hardest photo to correct that I've worked on so far. And it just showed me how much I really need to learn!


Click on this link to see the LARGE jpg of the image.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3652/3489715759_89354014f5_o.jpg

[philbach]

paultjack...
Well there is no end to learning about color. I felt that your final product was slightly too yellow and the faces seemed to be a tad low on contrast.

So I Downloaded your final and copied the layer and used a multiply blending mode at 55% opacity. Then things looked pretty yellow so I used a HSL adjustment layer and selected yellow and lowered the yellows saturation by 28%.

Its still not quite right I might add it may be a little too contrasty and saturated but I think you could tweak some more. Thanks for posting this problem its an excellent one to learn from.

Phil

[paultjack]

Well, it looks like the monitor I was using wasn't calibrated very well. This morning when I checked out my "Beautiful" work on my laptop LCD monitor I was very disappointed in the the contrast and skin tones. I totally agree with the skin looking too yellow. I had several adjustment layers in there to correct that but then my wife was complaining the skin was looking purple so I removed them instead of just adjusting them a little bit more. I was pretty beat after spending hours getting it to where it is. It actually looked looks a lot better on the monitor before I converted it to jpg and uploaded it. Still, it's just not the best it could be. If I am correct, the jacket the boy is wearing should be a nice gold color.

[Flashtones]

Looks good overall but I think the clothes look over-saturated. You're also getting some magenta fringing in certain areas of hair extending into the background.

[paultjack]

I have a real hard time with backgrounds. I painted in that background. But I don't know a good way to blend it in without messing up the hair. The result is that stupid halo. Do you have any suggestions on blending/painting around the hair? I have the same problem when I work with trees. The sky through the branches really gives me a fit. If you could lend some pointers or suggest a tutorial on that it would be awesome! :-)

[Flashtones]

are you able to post a screen grab of your layers pallet?

[paultjack]

OK, I think this is what you're asking for:
Paint Shop Pro Layer Pallette

[Flashtones]

I was hoping I might see from your layers where that magenta spill was coming from but it's not apparent there.

If you can determine which layer is causing it I'd just mask it out on the layer mask.

[unimatrix001]

I checked the channels copied the green channel pasted to a new layer blending mode to soft light, lab mode levels on all channels, back to rgb mode
many more levels adjustments, color balance layver, mask out skin gradient map reduce opacity to taste. 2 layers one set to soft light other to color painted in the red dress. new layer painted in some green set to soft light, new layer set to soft light painted over the boys jacket. Sampled the background next to the lady on the right and painted new layer blending mode soft light for background to remove yellowish tint.

[chillin]

I would convert to B&w & colorize it using the original colors.

[Nan]

Very nice Chillin. Looks quite natural.
Nan

[klassylady25]

Thank you for sharing. I love chillin's but I chose to leave the softer look.