Walt Wayman wrote:
>While cleaning out the basement last month, I discovered a long-forgotten shoe
>box full of slides.....
>
>I'm getting closer and closer to getting the colors right, but still no cigar,
>so anybody have any suggestions that might help me get it right? I just can't
>get the background green without screwing up everything else.
>
>
Well, I'll toss my hat into the ring with a quick cut that looks better
to me than the others posted so far
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/MandW1.htm>.
And - I'll tell you why I don't think this image in the form posted
can't be really properly corrected - and how it probably is possible to
restore it more completely with a new scan.
What appears to have happened is that the different color layers have
faded at different rates, so the histograms are out of sync with each
other. In the posted JPEG, the red channel has badly blown highlights
and almost no true shadows. The green channel has clipped shadow detail
and about perfect highlights. The blue channel is the best balanced,
with just a bit of lost highlights and a bit more lost shadow detail. If
the others matched this, there wouldn't be much problem. I don't think
much good can be done without working first with the layers individually.
One can go through, as I did, rebalance the layers and up saturation
selectively to get something that looks quite a bit more like the
original likely did, but the the clipped ends end up as bumps of all the
same tone in the rebalanced image, so it still doesn't look quite right.
The really blown reds, in particular, cause problems. I doubt if the
reddish hair highlights in my version are right.
Now the possible good news. If the slide is scanned at 16 bits with 0%
white and black points, it is almost certain to recover some of the lost
brightness range. How much, who knows? However much is recovered will
contribute to a better reconstruction. All of the rebalancing needs to
be done in 16 bit. After the three histograms are realigned, it could go
back to 8 bit, if you want, although I'd stick to 16 right to the end
and only convert to create the JPEG for posting.
Moose
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|