Miami vs Mars: Orange removal

[kadevries]

Newbie here. I have looked around and have not found a sufficient way to make the beaches of Miami not look like the beaches of Mars. The building is probably art deco-ish flamingo pink. The sky and water...well...blue. Our grandparents and we were also not jaundiced. Eek. Can anyone help?

I have several more like it so I need assistance. BTW I use PSP9 for the most part but just received PSE3 with my new wacom for christmas.

Thanks in advance,
Kelly

[CJ Swartz]

...have not found a sufficient way to make the beaches of Miami not look like the beaches of Mars. The building is probably art deco-ish flamingo pink. The sky and water...well...blue. Our grandparents and we were also not jaundiced. Eek. Can anyone help?...Kelly

Kelly, Welcome to RetouchPRO!
Now, for the 'bad' news -- Kelly, your photo(s) have a "bad blue channel". No, they're worse than bad, they're BAD! Don't worry if you're not sure what that is, you can learn about channels here. I don't want to rush you too fast, and I'm not a PSP user (I use Photoshop 7.0). Without exchanging your blue channel with another channel, it would be hard to get a decent image from this photo, but by exchanging the blue channel (with a copy of the green channel or a copy of the Lightness channel from LAB), you are then able to use Levels (or Curves) to correct the color. After the color is fixed, there is some more work to do, but a run through a noise reducing filter (Neat Image, Noise Ninja, Noiseware, etc.) helped a lot.

Here's a link to a RetouchPRO tutorial on "Replacing a Color Channel"
If you understand it right away -- that's great. If it seems confusing, don't worry -- there's time to learn, and it can be fun while you're learning!

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=23

Okay, you can start asking questions now that you have some idea of what the questions are!

[kadevries]

Wow!

I have been working on this for 2 days! Thank you, thank you. I think I can do some more!

Kelly

[Swampy]

Kelly... very good. The flesh tones are good and granny's hair is white also the little girl's bathing suit is closer to a bright red rather than hot pink and that may be the appropriate color.

[edgework]

Swapping channels can be useful, but they always push a bit towards a duotone effect. I find that the power of LAB to resurrect color that's all but vanished is unparalleled.

I moved into LAB and applied separate curves for highlights and shadows to remove the cast. Then a third curve to stretch the lightness channel and to pump the colors in the a and b channel.

Back to RGB for a Selective color addition of yellow to magenta, an additional curve to boost yellow even more and a third curve using a borrowed black plate from a CMYK conversion as a layer mask to boost blacks. This more or less gave a balanced color palette.

A final trip back to LAB for another color move to the a and b channels.

[byRo]

edgework, I also will work in LAB at every chance I get. In fact it was one of your posts that really got me so interested.
But, in this case, I do not see LAB as a good method because this is not one of your usual colour cast problems. This is a channel problem.

If the pictures got attached in the right order, you'll see this...
1) The original blue channel;
2) Blue Channel equalized;
3) Noise reduced;
4) Inverted and levelled.

As you can see the little information that remains is actually inverted, so trying to coax the colours out will just be heading in the wrong direction.
So, in this case, better off just throwing it away and copying from the other channels.

I have fixed other photos like this one (inverted blue channel), and wondered how did it get this way?

Rô

[mistermonday]

Edgework, I am another LAB-aholic and have to agree with Ro here.
Kelly, where I got to in 2 mins seems to be where you got to before cleaning up the pinholes and smoothing out the noise. I applied the Red Channel to the Blue in Normal mode to replace it. A simple Hue adjustment with the Hue Saturation command brought the colors into an acceptable range yielding some blue and green in the sky and water.
Regards, MM

[kadevries]

Ro and Mistermonday-

How do I decide which channel to use (red vs green)? Also, is Lab in photoshop? I compensated for not having it by splitting channels then deleting the blue and replacing with green. Is that right? I got that from CJ's description.

Thank you to all who have helped so far. I tried it with a couple of other pics that are bad and had varing results depending on the damage. What did happen to the blue channel?

Kelly

[mistermonday]

The Answer?

Ro, My guess is that the original negative was scanned as if it were a positive (slide film) and perhaps there was a CMYK output (if you convert the image to CMYK the yellow channel is dead. The image may have been printed that way and then subsequently scanned in RGB.
Best Rgds
Murray

[byRo]

Kelly, don't worry too much about LAB. It's not a PS thing, it's another colour mode, like RGB, CMYK - usually very good for working the colours. It's worth getting to know, but you can get along fine without it.

As to which channel, I don't know of any golden rule. I'd just try a few alternatives and see which looks best. By definition, they are all just substitutes none is absolutely "correct", but some will seem better than others.

mistermonday, as I remember when I saw this type before it was a new scan of some old (20 years, 110 type film) negatives and not a new scan of old prints.
Kelly, is this a scan of a negative or a print?

Rô

[kadevries]

This is a scan of a print. Yes, I am the "big" girl so I won't tell you how much older than 20 years it is but I will say closer to 30 (ahem...or more... ).

I have several that seem to be from around the same time so it must be attributed to the printing process used.

Kelly

[mistermonday]

Kelly, as Ro points out, you each image is different and you need to try both of the other good channels to see which one works best. You can also use Photoshop's Image>Adjust>Channel Mixer to replace the Blue channel with a new channel made up of a blend of Reg and Green channels.
Regards, MM

[Flora]

Hi,

Kelly,

Welcome to RP!

.... and just to stir the waters a bit more , I tried a different way ....

I usually try to salvage a bad channel and replace it only if I think it's beyond repair ... I usually prefer to work in RGB mode, but turn to LAB or CMYK whenever I don't get the result I like in RGB ....

That said, here, I managed to restore the RGB Blue channel in an acceptable way with a simple Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer ...

* Attachment 1 : the restored picture.
* Attachment 2 & 3 : the changed values in my Hue/Saturation A.L.
* Attachment 4 : the immediate result of my Hue/Saturation adjustment on the whole image.
* Attachment 5 : the B&A of my Hue/Saturation adjustment on the Blue Channel.

[byRo]

Flora, just perfect! (as always )

This inverted Blue channel got me thinking, maybe this is one of those cases for which, like Flora mentioned, the best route may be through CMYK.

Converting the image to CMYK and using the channel mixer to create a new Yellow channel from 100% Magenta quickly gets all the colours going in the right direction. Saturation and AutoColour will finish the job, as posted. (still with all the noise)

Rô

[Flora]

Thanks Rô!!