SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

Looks good! A friend of mine gave me an old picture of his mother as a young girl that was faded. I was able to bring the details up and make a version that he liked a lot. I have a lot of old film negatives starting in the 60's and 70's, and some are in better condition than others. Scanned them into my computer so I can try to edit and reclaim the best ones. Whether it was how they were stored or the quality of the materials, I do not know, but some of them have turned orange! It is a project for a long winter...

Steve DeMott Loc: St. Louis, Missouri (Oakville area)

I found that using your camera to copy the photos works better then a scanner.
1. It takes less time once your setup
2. the dpi will be better
3. You'll have a raw image to work with instead of a jpg or tiff file.

Thanks for your input

(Download)

Jim Plogger Loc: East Tennessee

A single click on Auto Color in Photoshop rendered this.

(Download)

alfeng Loc: Out where the West commences ...

Color balance can be tricky ...

Whether-or-not the attached are better-or-acceptable, they were achieved with the SINGLE PRESET using IRFANVIEW (a freeware program) ...

Of course, they can be tweaked further as one sees fit.

alfeng Loc: Out where the West commences ...

BTW. Image with a simple rotation & crop using IRFANVIEW ...

drmike99 Loc: Fairfield Connecticut

I don't understand what you mean by "in the 70's it was probably a color negative (Kodacolor film?) as opposed to the positive color film we had in later years." In the 70's we had both color negative and color positive (transparency). In fact, for 35mm prior to that era we had ONLY positive. Kodacolor was medium format and up until sometime in the 60s, when it was introduced also in 35mm. Before that, 35mm color meant Kodachrome, the upstart "new" Ektachrome, or the insipid and unsaturated (and always color shifted) Anscochrome.

BTW speaking of Ektachrome, it has been revived and will be test marketed by the end of this year on on sale in 35mm (and I think Super 8) in 2018.
There WAS some talk about reincarnating Kodachrome also, but that's still rumor.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

If you aquire a scanner in the future the Epson V850 will do a great job automatically fixing faded colors as you scan. It will also remove minor flaws and any dust. The Epson scanners are pretty incredible.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Conventional 'C' prints (silver-halide-based, with dyes coupled into the emulsion and the silver washed out) fade quickly. The yellow, magenta, and cyan dye layers fade at different rates. But when the paper base itself darkens, that is a sign that residual chemicals remained in the paper after processing. That is usually a sign of incomplete fixing, incomplete bleaching, incomplete washing, or failure to use the proper final stabilizer solution (depending on the vintage of the process!).

The quickest way to restore as much color balance as you can achieve is to use a flatbed scanner with Digital ICE with ROC technology. ICE removes spots from surface dust, grit, grime. ROC stands for Restore Original Color, which Epson calls One Touch Color Restoration. That's what it ATTEMPTS to do, with varying results, depending on how much fading has occurred. I find it gets close, and I can tweak a lot easier from there, in Photoshop.

If you just have digital camera images, you can adjust them in Lightroom, Photoshop, or Affinity Photo (etc.) by several different means. Tools such as Auto Color, click balance eyedroppers, color temperature sliders, highlights, whites, shadows, blacks, etc. can help restore a more pleasing look.

I like to copy slides, prints, and negatives with my camera. I record raw images, so I have 16-bit files to play with, and Adobe Camera Raw (Photoshop ACR) or the Lightroom Develop Module (ACR with a better interface) to control everything. I can photograph color negatives, drag the curves backwards (Invert command in photoshop), and adjust each color separately to get the color right. I can photograph black-and-white negatives and invert the image. I can easily pull shadow details from prints that you would not know are there.

When copying color images, adjusting the curves for red, green, and blue channels separately gives you pretty good control over the look of the image.

I've found I can restore pleasing looks to most images, but sometimes, black-and-white conversion is the best option.

Here are a few restorations photographed from film images, which are generally harder to restore if color has faded:

Kodacolor 126 negative from 1967

(Download)

Kodachrome slide, from 1983

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Anscochrome slide, from early 1950s

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Kodak Tri-X negative, 1971 (pushed to E.I. 1250)

(Download)

dannac Loc: 60 miles SW of New Orleans

#3, early 1950's ...

StanRP Loc: Ontario Canada

Hi, There is not much info to work with - but here is my try:

(Download)

salewis

When I was a teen-ager in the 1950's, the advice I received was to shoot in black and white because color photos would not last. People knew these photos would have a short life.

StanRP Loc: Ontario Canada

Hi,

As it is your wife, I decided to have another try.

(Download)

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That’s my sister and the dog that eventually bit my best friend’s ear off. I was born several years later. My uncle took that with an Argus C44 that I inherited.

BTW that’s a vertical cropped from a horizontal.

StanRP Loc: Ontario Canada

My apologies. I took the text above the photo to apply to it.

One Jughead Loc: Greene County, OH

Just a couple of minutes using Photo Scape and I got this.

(Download)