Help! Can this picture be saved?

[jthomas]

The picture below is a scan (Canon 4000F) of a Kodachrome slide made in 1981. It is obviously underexposed (The Minolta SRT101 had a faulty meter), and the color balance is way off. At least the color looks o.k. in a slide projector.

Can anyone suggest how to improve it is PS? I have PS7.01.

Many thanks. The little girl on the left is now age 31 and is getting married on Saturday. We want to be able to make some prints of this and several more like it before the wedding!

http://fish-n-float.smugmug.com/photos/22113514-L.jpg

[XO-Studios]

The picture below is a scan (Canon 4000F) of a Kodachrome slide made in 1981. It is obviously underexposed (The Minolta SRT101 had a faulty meter), and the color balance is way off. At least the color looks o.k. in a slide projector.

Can anyone suggest how to improve it is PS? I have PS7.01.

Many thanks. The little girl on the left is now age 31 and is getting married on Saturday. We want to be able to make some prints of this and several more like it before the wedding!

http://fish-n-float.smugmug.com/photos/22113514-L.jpg
The girl on the left isn't badly exposed.

Ok here is what I would do, and it will have OK results, not great

First of do everything with adjustment layers.

1) Copy Background
2) first adjustment layer levels: pull sliders into histogram
3) second adjustment layer curves: adjust curve to make over all picture lighter.
4) adjustment layer hue/saturation: adjust color to your liking

Play around untill this looks OK

After this, pull a copy of the original back ground (or a flattened copy of the adjusted picture) to the top of the layers and make a contrast mask.
[select top layer (copy) adjust:desaturate, inverse, gaussian blur 2-10 pixels pending resolution; now set blendmode to softlight or another setting (experiment with screen)] This will bring the darkened areas up a little.
More about contrast mask here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast_masking.shtml
and here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-contrast-masking.shtml

FWIW, YMMV,

XO,

[DavidTO]

You could use shadow/highlights, LAB mode...there's lots you can do in PS, but I think they'll all net mediocre results from that image.

The best option is to rescan the slide. There's a lot of information in that film that was not captured in the scan, and no matter what you do in PS you will never have as much latitude as you will at the moment you scan from slide to digital file.

If it's an important image, think about paying someone to do it, someone who will take the time, has the knowledge and equipment to make it sing. Or just give it another stab yourself.

[jthomas]

You could use shadow/highlights, LAB mode...there's lots you can do in PS, but I think they'll all net mediocre results from that image.

The best option is to caan the slide. There's a lot of information in that film that was not captured in the scan, and no matter what you do in PS you will never have as much latitude as you will at the moment you scan from slide to digital file.



Interesting suggestion. What should I do differently if I rescan? :dunno

[DavidTO]

Interesting suggestion. What should I do differently if I rescan? :dunno

I don't know the scanner you're using, but you must have color options as you scan. My Canon flatbed has levels, color, etc. Play around with the settings, and you'll be amazed at how much you can pull out of that slide. You can correct the color balance to a large degree, as well. Do as much as possible at that stage, then you can do little touch up corrections in PS.

[DavidTO]

And hey, if you're successful with the rescan, post your results!

[ubergeek]

The color balance, and to some degree the exposure, can be corrected using the Levels adjustment. The "right" color is subjective, but I think we can all agree that this is better:

http://ubergeek.smugmug.com/photos/22126514-L.jpg

The above image is just a "proof of concept"--you'll want to scan this (and other images to be manipulated) at the highest optical resolution and bit depth that your scanner supports. And, as others have suggested, the more detail you can get your scanner to pull out (using controls for exposure/contrast/etc.) the better.

Then, assuming that you can capture more than 8 bits per color channel, you'll want to save the file as a "16 bits/channel" image (which will limit your file format options to PSD, TIFF and maybe a couple of others). Once you've done all the corrections you may want to save it as a JPEG (for letting us see the results :D) but do this only as a final step.

By the way, the input to the Levels function to obtain the above is as follows:

RGB Channel: no change (0/1.00/255)
Red Channel: input levels 12/1.11/255
Green Channel: input levels 21/2.24/255
Blue Channel: input levels 3/1.00/255

Cheers,
Jeremy

[wxwax]

Here's a B&W version, I only really paid attention to her face. Her face could easily be darkened a little, I chose not to. I couldn't make the color look right.


http://wxwax.smugmug.com/photos/22138247-M.jpg

And with a little sepia for tonight, a la Andy.

http://wxwax.smugmug.com/photos/22139451-L.jpg

[jthomas]

I do appreciate all the help you folks have given me. I did try DavidTO's suggestion and rescanned, making some corrections with the CanoScan software. This helped, but I'm still not very happy with my result.

Ubergeek's results look pretty good, perhaps a bit too green. I may try one more time by tweaking his settings.

Perhaps this slide just can't be helped much!

Thanks again, all!:lust

[Nikolai]

Rescan would probably give you the best results.
I played with your image in CS2, it can be tweaked, but its histogram is sooo out of wack, so I think Sid's b/w version is the best you can do w/o rescanning.
Just my $.02

[tmlphoto]

I took ubergeeks and corrected green cast with "color balance". Tweaked the shadows a little with "curves" and cropped. Not great, but not too bad. You could probably do better with the original.
http://tmlphoto.smugmug.com/photos/22175347-L.jpg

[pathfinder]

I took ubergeeks and corrected green cast with "color balance". Tweaked the shadows a little with "curves" and cropped. Not great, but not too bad. You could probably do better with the original.
http://tmlphoto.smugmug.com/photos/22175347-L.jpg

TML I liked the look of yours so I started there - I then duplicated it with ctrl-J and multiply blended it and took it to lab where i strongly blurred the a and b channel. I then overlay blended to lighten the girl on the left and the Miss Piggy Package as well. I cropped the burnt out areas along the bottom and the right side as well - Not sure if this is any better or not. The original 72dpi image doesn't look very good in the histogram are at all.

[XO-Studios]

The girl on the left isn't badly exposed.

Ok here is what I would do, and it will have OK results, not great

First of do everything with adjustment layers.

1) Copy Background
2) first adjustment layer levels: pull sliders into histogram
3) second adjustment layer curves: adjust curve to make over all picture lighter.
4) adjustment layer hue/saturation: adjust color to your liking

Play around untill this looks OK

After this, pull a copy of the original back ground (or a flattened copy of the adjusted picture) to the top of the layers and make a contrast mask.
[select top layer (copy) adjust:desaturate, inverse, gaussian blur 2-10 pixels pending resolution; now set blendmode to softlight or another setting (experiment with screen)] This will bring the darkened areas up a little.
More about contrast mask here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast_masking.shtml
and here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-contrast-masking.shtml

FWIW, YMMV,

XO,
I applied some of my own wisdom, and while I can get the picture better, it is challenging to keep the skin colors in what Baldy calls 'legal skintones' and get rid of the color cast.

Oh well.

XO,