Bad Yellow Photo

[Liz]

Hi
Well I've tried all my methods and still end up with a crappy outcome. I think this should be "apply" channel or something to kill the orange/yellow. What would other people suggest to restore colour? Just a basis from which to start with a suggested workflow. Thanks

[Doug Nelson]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

I had pretty good luck with a curves adjustment layer. Click with the white eyedropper on the white wall behind them, click with the black eyedropper on one of the black dresses.

Still plenty of cleanup to do, and you might want to try re-clicking a bit, but it wasn't a bad result.

[Liz]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Thanks Doug. I did try the black/white/grey threshold layer stuff. Got lots of weird stuff. I just think this is so "yellow" there has to be a counter action to it. What that is, I don't know.

[Repairman]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Try Colour balance and just experiment with the sliders. You should get close in a couple of separate conversions. Very quick effort attached for general idea rather than final result.

[CarolB]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Hi Liz!

Here is my attempt. I used Hue/Saturation several times, Highlights/Contrast, and Bright/Contrast too. You have to work with the sliders of each to get the look that you want.

Hope this helps.
Carol

[Liz]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Thanks Repairman and Carol. While I appreciate your efforts, those were there the results I was getting with all my fiddling about. OlBaldy come channel guru, you still around? What would you suggest?

[Doug Nelson]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

There's still some brushwork to do, but this isn't too bad. Pretty much what I already told you, except I also used gaussian blur on just the blue channel and added a blue cooling photo filter.

[Tulack]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t31.0-8/11731795_10156030961765153_8514380555587245191_o.jpg

[klev]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Okay I said I would start doing examples. Here's my ten minute attempt. I am somewhat familiar with the films of that era. It looks like 70s or early 80s color negative film. I kept that in mind, although I could do a more detailed job. If you want to see layers I'll post them.

My approach is pretty simple. I use mostly channel mixer and levels for this kind of thing. I don't assume anything is "neutral" grey because it wouldn't be in the original shot. I always mask off skintones, knowing that I need to get them to a place that doesn't look obviously messed up without it causing problems for other adjustments.

I also prefer the 32 bit version of channel mixer, because gamma 1.0 spaces tend to behave better. I applied a couple small adjustments at 16 that were not available at 32 in CS6, specifically curves and selective color.

Also note that the original blue channel was unusable. I zeroed its contribution in channel mixer and rebuilt part of a blue channel from a linear combination of green and red. Subsequent layers brought it back closer to something reasonable. It's possible to get something much more pleasant in terms of skintones without strongly violating the original color palette. It would just take more time.

Most of the time here is just spent thinking. You want to consider the original film type and the cruddy lighting. They're part of the image, and you shouldn't violate that.

[chillin]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

One more to collections. I used almost all of the color correction tools + masking.

[kmccormi]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

That... was a lot of yellow!

Here's what I did: 1) adjusted the white balance using a Threshold layer for black, white and grey points. 2) Cleaned up the colour noise in the background by using a new layer set to color and then painting the walls a solid colour. 3) Channel by channel levels adjustments followed by blurring and noise reduction on the Blue channel. 4) there was still a lot of yellow creeping into skin tones so I used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to selectively mask and fix skin tones. 5) Added a fairly light High Pass filter to bring out a few more details and finally 6) minor dodging and burning to improve contrast.

Cheers,

Kevin

[stormyboy]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Here's my attempt beginning with the one-trick pony Kodak Digital Roc followed by various roundtrips between Lightroom and PS.

Tom

[Ruzzez]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Background was address on separate layer

[Repairman]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Stormyboy's just edging it at the moment! If you guy's are going to cheat and use masks I might have another crack at it LOL

[klev]

Re: Bad Yellow Photo

Stormyboy's just edging it at the moment! If you guy's are going to cheat and use masks I might have another crack at it LOL

It's good, but it's a bit cold. My immediate thoughts were Kodak gold 400 or whatever preceded that. It would have been somewhat warm no matter what when it was shot. Masking doesn't have to be precise for an example. I haven't bothered with a tablet at all for these. I can't draw a decent mask with a trackpad, but the fuzzy shapes have been good enough to demonstrate my point. Also I didn't realize that was a yellow shirt.