help: Partial sunburn/yellow cast in image

[ScanRookie]

Hi,

I just scanned my whole family collection negatives (50+ years old) and still learning Photoshop CC 2014 as a beginner/amateur.

All pics were scanned in 4000dpi, 16bit, Adobe RGB colorspace, unsharp mask disabled and histogram/color balance untouched in scanner software...i hope this was the way to do it

My LCD is calibrated as 5500K, 2.2 Gamma, AdobeRGB.

The first pic i try to fix seems already too difficult for me, since it has damages and i have not mastered selection-masks/isolating colors fully yet.

The pic has a yellow cast on top. I try to fix that. The blue channel still have the image details behind the cast. Attached is the image. Person is cut out for privacy reasons...i hope my sample still meets the posting rules here.

My first attempt was just cloning the 2nd row from top of the wall and move it up with some angle transform to get the stones and colors right. Later i used selections to darken the holes...result was quite ok, but i would like to use the blue channel details as it shows how the image should be.

In my 2nd attempt i only kept the blue channel, converted it to 16bit gray, save the tiff. Later i combined the original colored pic and the gray pic in 2 separate layers. I put the gray as lower layer. The colored one above and created a mask to hide the yellow part so it shows the the grayed wall from the lower layer without the cast. I then try to color the wall keeping the texture, but could not do it with a layer and blendingmode set to color.
The painted color of the damaged wall are darker since its from the gray pic.
I hope someone can give me some advice/help here.

Also, i am not sure if my workflow is correct, so i hope for some advice too.

My workflow for colored pics:

1. backup original TIFF to another layer and check RGB channel layers
2. crop the backup
3. fix scratches and other damages
4. fix colors with levels, apply contrast/curves/saturation/vibrance
5. apply NeatImage noise reduction
6. optional resize for print/HDTV/web and 300dpi/72dpi/72dpi and 24bit if saving jpeg after sharpening
7. apply HighPass Sharpen filter or unsharp mask (not sure when adjustment is enough?)
8. save master as PSD file...or should i flatten it to TIFF?

The resulting PSD is sometimes multiple times bigger than the original image...so i wonder if i should flatten the image if i never will be fixing it again and happy with my current fix.

My workflow for B/W pics is:

1. backup original TIFF to another layer and check RGB channel layers
2. crop the backup
3. image was scanned in color, so apply B/W adjustment or take green layer
4. fix scratches and other damages
5. apply contrast, curves
6. apply NeatImage noise reduction
7. optional resize for print/HDTV/web and 300dpi/72dpi/72dpi and 8bit if saving jpeg later after sharpening
8. apply HighPass Sharpen filter or unsharp mask (not sure when adjustment is enough?)
9. save master as PSD file...or should i flatten it to TIFF?

Hope to hear some advice. Thanks in advance.

I am still reading more and more to get better in this but there is so much to learn. I am viewing all the restoration courses on lynda, but alot of techniques i forget easy again.

The only technique i confidently master at the moment is the color correction through threshold/mark black/white points, 50% gray layer/difference blending, threshold mark gray point then apply Levels and set white/black/gray eyedroppers to the previous markers.

I hope to improve my skills...got a lot of photos and scanned negatives to do with photoshop

BTW..i found an article here with an airplane that also had some simular burn streak, but i could not understand much of how to do it. I need to be more experienced...not sure what the link was for that article again, but the trick there was to get the luminance right and then put the colors back...i just don't know how to do that.

[Wolly55]

Re: help: Partial sunburn/yellow cast in image

To me this looks like light leak.
A quick fix could be to duplicate the layer and turn it to black and white.
When the B/W menu opens up adjust the yellow slider until the damaged area blends with the rest,
Add a layer mask to this layer and paint over the bottom half of the layer mask with a soft edge brush unto the yellow area . This should leave you with a coloured bottom half and B/W top.
You can then click on the layer image icon not the mask and go to the hue saturation , on here you could select colourize in the bottom right and adjust the sliders to match the colour of the lower half of that wall.
I hope this make sense to you as I'm not that good at putting this into writing.

[lurch]

Re: help: Partial sunburn/yellow cast in image

If you have a yellow cast, the blue channel will be off. Yellow and blue are complementary. You are best off color correcting, then cloning a row of bricks. Unless you choose to crop the offending row off. In that case, you should maintain the existing aspect ratio.

If you choose to, you could get the luminance correct and then put the colors back, but this is probably beyond your current knowledge base (not that you could not learn . . .). And it's overkill for the amount of damage you're facing.

[philbach]

Re: help: Partial sunburn/yellow cast in image

Well it sure seems like some sort of a scanner problem. A look at the channels show that the Red and Green Channels are almost absent at the top of the photo.

Maybe you could try to scan the transparencies again but turn the slide upside down this time and place the two files on top of each other in photoshop. Rotate one of them 180 degrees to align them and then chop away the bad part.

[ScanRookie]

Re: help: Partial sunburn/yellow cast in image

Thanks all. Yes, the blue channel seems to be having the details.

I don't think the scanner is defective. These are pics from 50 years ago and not been maintained well due to house movements etc. Some scans are good and some are really damaged. I have come across Kodachrome slides where colors blew me away and were still topnotch.

Cropping the bad area was an option, but that would be my last resort.

I have been fiddling around with the blue channel and continued my 2nd attempt...

In the gray image i first added a channel mixer to make the top part with the sunleak area to look like the same color as the lower area. Then i fix the crack in the transition that was caused by the reddish/yellow with brushing the same color of the good wall beneath. I then got a wall that looks about the same color (if my eyes don't lie) in gray.

I combined this result with the original color image above the gray image as layer. Put a mask on the colored one hiding the top part and showing that as gray. Then i created a layer and painted the color on the top part.

I then darkened the black holes through a selection, feathered the edges 9.5 with a mask layer and made all the holes that were lightly faded dark again. This could be done better...i think i need to redo this though.

Next i used levels to correct the white balance. Did some color balance to correct some blueishness and came up with the following result in the attachment. Fixing dust/scratches still needs to be done though.

I do notice that the wall has 2 colors...left is more yellow and right looks more blue. I think that the negative is losing color through the years. The negatives have been cleaned with PEC-12 film cleaner so i can't clean it any better. Hmmm...or maybe the sunlight was coming from left??

[ScanRookie]

Re: help: Partial sunburn/yellow cast in image

Just wanted to say i tried the hue/saturation way and that works too. Thanks!
At some areas when its faded or oversaturated i could use the light/contrast adjustment to decrease the fading/saturation.
I also just noticed that a psd file already has the complete image embedded in it...i first thought it was just a file linking to the original image.
Started to progress in my scanned collection if not encountering more difficult challenges :-).
Right now i have another one...will start a new thread for it.