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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Playing with photos - part 2

I'm still having a lot of fun messing around with my family photos in Photoshop Elements. I'm concentrating on our more recent photos at the moment, dating from the 70s. I have some books on digital photo restoration on order but the estimated delivery date is still a month away. A month! Ridiculous, but even including the outrageous postage it's at least 25% cheaper to order them from the USA than to buy here in Australia.

So, while I wait, I'm reading internet tutorials and experimenting. I do have one or two photoshop books, but they're pretty basic.

Here's a before and after. It's a crop of the original image, reduced to 50%. The original image had a paper texture problem and a colour cast, but only very minor marks to clear up and no tears or coloured splotches of any sort.














































I'm quite happy with how I've cleared the paper texture (which isn't nearly as visible here as it is full size). I'm not as pleased with the colour correction. As with the texture, I don't think the colour problems are as obvious here as in the original. There was a disinct magenta cast over everything, but especially the shadows on the faces.

I think I've improved the colour in the "after" shot... but I'm not entirely happy with it. More experimentation needed, I think!

Comments welcome, as always!

2 comments:

  1. Not quite sure what Photoshop Elements has missing from it compared to the full version, but to sort out the magenta hue, try:

    Go to Image> Adjustments> Color Balance, and then pull the magenta slider towards a greener hue and tailor it to your preferences.

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  2. Thanks, John. Unfortunately that's one of the things Elements is missing! Your comment inspired me to try again, though. I had a good result with photo filter adjustment layers using the inverse of the shadow colour.

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