fire damage family photo from the 70's

[kmacphoto]

Hello! One of my clients home recently burned down. the were able to save a handful of photos... but this one in particular is very important. im having a hell of a time attempting to get the color right as its so dingy and dark. If anyone has any techniques they would care to share with me I would appreciate it. I figure I should get the coloring better before I start removing the spark marks and smoke damage on the photo.

eeh help!

[stormyboy]

Re: fire damage family photo from the 70's

Hello! One of my clients home recently burned down. the were able to save a handful of photos... but this one in particular is very important. im having a hell of a time attempting to get the color right as its so dingy and dark. If anyone has any techniques they would care to share with me I would appreciate it. I figure I should get the coloring better before I start removing the spark marks and smoke damage on the photo.

eeh help!

Here's a version that the one-trick pony DigitalRoc produced:

[genf]

Re: fire damage family photo from the 70's

Here is my take. Auto-color does a good job on this image. After that, some cloning and healing, some more curves, saturation adjustment, noise reduction and a bit sharpening.
The resulting colors don't look bad, presumably because all channels contain valuable data.

[Vernon]

Re: fire damage family photo from the 70's

My quick 5-minute go at it. Of course, the image size limits full corrective effects...
spot-healing; curves adjustments, and even some levels per channel.

[Cupcake]

Re: fire damage family photo from the 70's

Auto color in CS6
Lightroom 4
some Light painting

[Copperbat]

Re: fire damage family photo from the 70's

I found PS auto corrects (tone, contrast, color) to work remarkably well on this image. I also adjusted the levels in each rgb channel independently to even out the mid-tones and shadows. Work in the highest resolution possible, as the compression artifact damage was very noticeable between the channels.

familycc2.jpg