Improving old photo's
 

I have decided to forgive my neice for arranging her wedding on the day of the FA Cup, when the mighty Reds wupp the gooners.

Her father, my thankfully ex brother-in-law, was to say the least an asshole, a drunken, violent, slob.
One of his many despicable acts before my wifes sister finally got shot of him, several years ago, was to destroy all the photographs that they had taken of the family and children on holiday etc.
I have always been a keen snapper and have many pictures of my niece and my own daughter, going back to when she was a baby.
As a wedding present, my missus thought that we could compile an album of pictures for her, to bring back some happy memories etc.

I have looked in my various albums and although they have been carefully stored, I notice that some pictures have 'aged' better than others. I assume that this is due to the original paper used for the prints, rather than the type of film used to take the pictures.
All the pictures are fairly sharp ( trusty Pentax SLR which is still going strong after 25 years ) but whilst some still have the full bright original colours, others have taken on a distinct 'reddish' hue.
I have PSP 5 but just don't have the time to become an expert with the more sophisticated aspects of editing.

Is anyone familiar with this 'reddening' of old prints, and more to the point is any software capable of enhancing these to give a more balanced colour?
I intend to scan the old pictures, then burn them onto a CD and get the local photoshop to do some copies.

Re: Improving old photo's
 

First of all, us Pentax owners must stick together - or we'll all end up with Canon gear.

I've got PSP7, so can't check back to what PSP5 has - but I assume there's a general colour balance option? Just take the picture, adjust the overall RGB colour balance until the pic looks right - this kind of work is not formulaic - you just have to try things and see what looks best.

I recently did some prints off CD at my local Tesco store - very good quality an only 10p each. Don't know how that compares with elsewhere, but they even supply and index print.

Re: Improving old photo's
 

10p per print is about average now, there are cheaper places but you can't always guarantee the same quality. Best thing to do is to fiddle about with the RGB till it looks good to you, make sure you check that things haven't altered to the point that someone looks orange in the photo etc and then resave the image to a "portable media" option that your print service will accept.
There are various tools (even picasa does basic adjustments) that can adjust photos to try and get them to "optimum" output so it may be trial and error to find the right one for you.

Re: Improving old photo's
 

Would you agree that this has been caused by the type of paper used for the oringinal prints. Some pictures, side by side, in the same album have excellent colour and many are older than the reddish ones.

My Pentax ME Super SLR still takes superb pictures but I must own up to also owning a Canon digital camera that is also very good.:blush:

Will have a play around with PSP/RGB and see what I can do.

Re: Improving old photo's
 

Certainly, the problem will just be with the dyes in the prints that have, well, died!

If you have the negatives then you could make more prints.

Otherwise, buy, or find someone with, Kodak's Digital ROC extension for Photoshop:

http://www.asf.com/products/plugins/...uginROCPRO.asp

Re: Improving old photo's
 

It's not necessarily the paper, but could well be due to incomplete stopping/fixing during development. Have you checked the paper of the different prints? (Usually marked on the back)

Being in an album, and hence mostly closed and not exposed to light, the only other factors I can think or are humidity and heat. Now central heating has a tendency to make a house drier and warmer than other forms of heating - downstairs is usually worse than upstairs.

I have a Pentax SF-7 and MZ-30 so I'm just waiting for the price on their *ist D to drop within reach (and/or lottery win :))

Anyway, found the following useful photo retouching links:

http://www.aucegypt.edu/acs/document...etouching.html

http://library.n0i.net/linux-unix/ap...h17/17-01.html (Uses GIMP - free image editor: http://www.gimp.org/)

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/is/suppo...ses/cast.phtml

Re: Improving old photo's
 

I may have the negatives but we are talking of negs over 25 years old, finding them will be the hardest thing.

Altis, The bottom right picture on that link is just the problem with several of mine, maybe not quite as bad. I would have thought that Paint Shop Pro would have a similar feature.

Edit. I have just found a CD-ROM I purchased ages ago, but never got round to using. It is an official toolkit with updates for PSP v5 to 8. One of the tools is a photo enhancing plug-in. Will have a look at that.

Re: Improving old photo's
 

http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html?node61.html
A good description of some correction techniques usin "the Gimp".

In principle, you colour pick pick representative points on a discoloured image, and then use RGB curves to match them to points of the correct colour on a similar image.

Works well for the midrange, but you may have to fiddle the top & bottom of the range - obviously, if there is something that should be white, that gives you a correction point for the top of the range.

Ideally, you want a set of points that should all be neutral:
White, light (but not white), mid grey & dark grey.