Removing colour hue – please help

NH
Posted By
Neil Hindry
May 19, 2005
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657
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4
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Closed
I wonder if you can help me.

I have a few old photographs that I want to repair and they have a very heavy red hue.

What is the easiest way to get rid of the heavy red hue that is spoiling the photographs and make them look normal & natural again? For information I am using PhotoShop 7.

I hope you are able to help me.

I appreciate any help or information given.

Thanks!

Neil

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C
Caitlin
May 19, 2005
"Neil Hindry" wrote in message
I wonder if you can help me.

I have a few old photographs that I want to repair and they have a very heavy red hue.

What is the easiest way to get rid of the heavy red hue that is spoiling the
photographs and make them look normal & natural again? For information I am using PhotoShop 7.

I hope you are able to help me.

I appreciate any help or information given.

Thanks!

Neil

Color balance adjustment – reduce magenta.

If you want some practical help in photo restoration visit the forum at www.retouchpro.com. Full of helpful people who will demonstrate their techniques of fixing individual images which you can upload.
E
embee
May 19, 2005
"Neil Hindry" wrote in message
I wonder if you can help me.

I have a few old photographs that I want to repair and they have a very heavy red hue.

What is the easiest way to get rid of the heavy red hue that is spoiling
the
photographs and make them look normal & natural again? For information I am using PhotoShop 7.

I hope you are able to help me.

I appreciate any help or information given.

Thanks!

Neil
Quick and easy method –
Add a levels adjustment layer (or just go into Levels – CTRL-L). Select the Black eyedropper and click on the point in your picture where the pixels are darkest. Next, select the White eyedropper and click at the point in your picture where the pixels are brightest. Finally – and this is the important part – select the Greypoint eyedropper tool and click at a point in your picture where the the pixels should be as neutral as possible (ie. mid grey). This will either involve you having some knowledge of the original scene (ie. knowing which part of the original picture should be neutral grey) OR a large amount of guesswork. A tip – if it’s an outdoor scene, look for some pavement or a road surface, these are usually pretty accurate mid-points. Avoid the temptation to choose a metallic object for a mid-point, they may be grey but they often give pretty horrible results.

There are plenty of better techniques. If I can help any further, feel free to email me.
C
Ctein
May 19, 2005
Dear Neil,

Well, the easiest, but not cheapest, way is to get a copy of the Photoshop plug-in, Digital ROC from Applied Science Fiction (a.k.a. Kodak Austin Division) — www.asf.com. It does a fabulous job of recovering old photos like that, likely better than you can do manually. I use it in some fashion on most of my commercial jobs.

Assuming you’d rather not throw money at the problem, here’s the manual approach:

1) Scan the photo in 16-bit mode if your scanner supports that. (If it only supports 8-bit scans, do steps 2 and 3 in the scanner software tools, to maximize tone and color information in your file.)

2) In Photoshop, find a part of the photo you’re pretty sure should be white (like an unexposed print border or a real white highlight). Use the Levels or Curves tool to move the white endpoints until the RGB values for that region are all equal and around 235 (which will be a very light gray, and the reason we’re not going for true white yet is so that you don’t accidentally clip highlight data).

3) Next find a part of the photo you’re pretty sure should be true black. Use Curves or Levels to adjust the black endpoints until that region has equal RGB values down around 25.

4) The picture will probably have an overall color cast and be low in saturation. If you can find something in the picture that was a neutral grey, you can use that as a guide in Curves. Set midpoints on each of the RGB curves and drag them up or down appropriately until the neutral tone looks neutral. Now the overall color balance should be pretty good.

5) Pull up Hues/Saturation and kick the overall saturation up to about +20.

This should get you in the neighborhood. Have fun!

pax / Ctein

==========================================
— Ctein’s Online Gallery http://www.ctein.com
— Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com ==========================================
RC
Rosanne Cleveland-King
May 20, 2005
I use the NIK filter system with PhotoShop and find that it works wonderfully with that sort of thing. I also use DCE tools for color correction.

Smiles,
Rosanne

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