photos taken in 1960

Unless you have one of the new scanners that can do a lot of the color restoration, dust and scratch removal, etc. you are in for a lot of time consuming manual work. Out side of a scanner with the hardware technology to most of this for you it is all manual work and not really something that can be with a plug-in. When I started working on restoring photo albums of images from the 1970’s I decided to buy the Epson V700 flatbed scanner since it has everything I need to automatically restore the color as well as dust and scratch removal for both negatives and prints. It was a good investment as it saved me years of work.

So if you have a lot of images to do you may wnat to consider a scanner upgrade. Just make sure that it has the technology to do this. The dust and scatches tech is called Digital Ice and the latest versions works for both film scans and print scans. The color restoration technology has an offical name as well but I can remember it off the top of my head. Just make sure that it mentions this in the specifications.

Otherwise get to know the clone and the healing brush and patch tools. Your going to need them. As for bring back contrast learn the levels command or if you have the time the curves tool.

Robert

Art is dealing with B&W photos Robert. And he says he’s OK with the dirt and scratches. By the way Digital ICE has been around quite a while.

For the B/W balance I would give the improved Auto Levels or Auto Contrast a try as a first pass – this may well be enough. If not you can save an manually optimised curves adjustment and apply it in an action.

Yes, Digital Ice has been around but only recently has it been alble to dust and scatch removal on photographic prints. Otherwise before then it only worked on film.

As for color restoration I haven’t seen a plug-in yet (fully automated) that gives the results of the color restoration hardware in a scanner. The problem with plug-ins is that they work ok at best and when the work ok it is only for some images. This leaves you still with a whole lot of adjustments to make manually.

Robert

I used an Epson 4180 to do the scans. It doesn’t have the technology you mentioned. I’ve posted one of the photos I worked on manually at
<http://download.yousendit.com/E4ECCAD60F002E02>
I haven’t tried autolevels or contrast on any of these photos though I did manually use levels and some curves. Maybe it’s more in my lack of experience (?)

Art

What version of Photoshop?

Apart from the features I mentioned for a first pass, which are improved in the latest versions, there is the Shadow/Highlight adjustment, which would help the picture you posted a great deal.

(BTW you can post pictures directly here as clickable thumbnails using pixentral.com or imageshack.us.)

Using CS3. I did try to use Shadow/Highlight but it seemed to not give me the graded contrast I was looking for. Trying to clean up the sky which to me looks dingy, it took out detail of the fence tops.
PS: thanks for the tip on pixentral.com

Art

You may have to play with the settings* in the Shadow/Highlight adjustment dialog and even apply other corrections later.

* see this tutorial: <http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/HiddenShadowsSM.mov>

Sorry, I’ve been away for the week. I’ll check out all your suggestions. Thank you all.

I don’t know why but the black & white selection (among others) is greyed out.

Check to see if it is in CMYK mode…the black and white layer adjustment doesn’t work in CMYK

It was in greyscale. When I switched to RGB it was doable, but of course useless because the photo was scanned in greyscale. There are no original colors.

art

Hue>Saturation>Colorize.

That will give you a base colour to work off.

Your link to that file has expired, Art – could you post the image on Pixentral, please?

<http://www.pixentral.com>

OK Fred, I’ll repost and try the colorize. Thanks everyone for participating.

Art

The new location of the photo is:

< http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1aKNhaO9Ue1dUcGmRS O89YZI83PWYz>

Art

Here’s another I just uploaded. The general "color" is what I have trouble dealing with.

< http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=10Ux1q2zHWrTElhIo1 kcootqQQMEj> art