Restoring Old Picture

Hey guys and gals. I have a picture that I need to be restored. The entire picture has "gone yellow" from age and I was hoping I could use Photoshop to restore it. I tried using auto-level, auto-color, and auto-contrast but they don't help too much. If someone could please restore this for me and tell me how you did it that would be awesome. Thank you so much!

http://img105.exs.cx/img105/2677/c2-1-07a.jpg

Restored Here

(temporary link, it'll be down in a few days)

This is a quick recolor. Its not perfect, but its a good starting point. To actually "restore" this photograph would take days.

Now before i mention how.....i really want to point out that "auto" anything really wont help in most situations. If you have a photo that needs minor touch ups.....then go ahead and use the auto features. But anything else (and extreme cases like this) auto is mostly uselsess.


You'll also need a basic understanding of levels/channels/color balance & hue/saturation to do this properly (curves is also a solution...though i usually stick with levels). Also to do this i used adjustment layers, that way i can go back and tweak anything (no permanent color changes). I'll post how below.

First - I used a color balance adjustment layer. The midtones i adjusted for more blue and cyan. I used pretty much the same settings for the shadow sliders, just in less amounts (dont want the photo too blue). The highlights i cranked up the blue and brought down the cyan.

You really have to play around and pick what looks best. Im using blue/cyan as i want to cancel out the red/yellow in the photo. The green/magenta doesnt make much difference here so i didnt touch it.

Second - I used a hue/saturation adjustment layer on top of the layer stack. I brought down the saturation about half way. After "balancing" the colors......the photo is just too vibrant (not to mention it's an old photo, so it would have dull colors no matter what condition its in.)

Third - I used a levels adjustment layer. If you use the histogram or the graph in the levels window, you'll see that there are no pure white pixels, and no pure black pixels (basically a gray photo). To fix this I used the color pickers (black point/white point) and selected those colors from the photo. This gave a fairly good result, but with too much contrast.......so i simply brougt down the opactiy of the adjustment layer.

Fourth - I now have a good photo to start working with (finishing touches etc). What I did was add a 2nd color balance adjustment layer (on top of the layer stack) and put back some reds/yellows (for skin tones etc) mostly in the midtones. A little red for the shadows (not much) and i left the highlights alone.

One last step i added, was to remove the yellow "grain" (scratches/dirt in the image). Basically i used hue/saturation, and on the yellow channel I brought down the saturation a bit.


Now you could skip all that, and just bring down the saturation of the yellow channel from the start. It'll give you ok results, but you'll lose definition in color/tones....which would be harder to put back.

I hope that helps. Some of it's a bit technical (ie levels/histogram) but its good to be familiar with them. Also most of this is guess work, so you'll just have to play around and tweak until you like it. These "steps" arent written in stone.

Rodder, you are so nice, that look really good.

Thank you so much Rodder. You helped me out a lot not just by doing the picture but also giving a detailed explination on how to do it myself. Thanks again!

Just a quick note or two here...

I also grabbed the "before" image and played with it a little bit. The quick steps I took were pretty much the same as Rodder took, though instead of a Levels adjustment Layer, I used a Curves adjustment layer, for the better control it offers.

One thing that is glaringly bad about the original: Have a look at your Channels. Isolate and view the Blue channel. There is some SERIOUS nasty noise in it. You may want to rescan, or, if you can't do that, take a look at the following tutorial about how to replace a defective channel.
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/PeteBauer59.html
I gave it a quick try and got rid of a lot of the Blue Channel mess pretty easily. And remember...you can apply Image Adjustments on individual channels just like you can with a whole image, and in the case of your badly degraded photo, you're going to have to do a LOT of work and experimentation to get it to look good.