Colour balance - advice?

[Kris V]

My daughter is celebrating her 20th Anniversary in a few months and I'm putting a DVD together for her with pictures of highlights of her life from birth till now.
This picture is one that I really like to include, but it has been scanned from a Polaroid, and has quite some spots, not to mention the red colour cast.
Except for the colour correction, I haven't really start working on it.
Any recommendations re: sharpening, selective brightening or darkening? Would it benefit from a slight vignette?
All advice Welcome!
Original and colour corrected:

[Manfred M]

It looks like the original is from an image where the dyes have started to break down, so it is a bit more than just a colour balance issue. Unfortunately, I can't get down to my regular computer right now, so I am working off a very inexpensive netbook that does not have a calibrated screen

The first thing that I did was to get some of the red and yellow out to compensate for the deterioration of the blues and cyans. The exposure is off a bit, so I went in and adjusted the levels to bring out the full range of colours and finally I upped the saturation a bit to take out the flatness of the image a bit. The usual dust from the scanner needs to be cleaned up and I might be tempted to play with the curves a tiny bit to crisp up the contrast too.

[Kris V]

It looks like the original is from an image where the dyes have started to break down, so it is a bit more than just a colour balance issue. Unfortunately, I can't get down to my regular computer right now, so I am working off a very inexpensive netbook that does not have a calibrated screen

The first thing that I did was to get some of the red and yellow out to compensate for the deterioration of the blues and cyans. The exposure is off a bit, so I went in and adjusted the levels to bring out the full range of colours and finally I upped the saturation a bit to take out the flatness of the image a bit. The usual dust from the scanner needs to be cleaned up and I might be tempted to play with the curves a tiny bit to crisp up the contrast too.

Looks WAAAYYYY better than my attempt!
Thanks for the edit and explanation.

[Glenn NK]

You've done a pretty good job Manfred.

Glenn

[ggt]

VERY NICE clean-up Manfred. Your post is added to the ones I've printed for future reference. My only question is did you "reduce noise" --is that what you mean by cleaning the dust from the scanner? Did you do anything with the "render" lighting options (that is what it is called on PSE-anyway)?

[Manfred M]

VERY NICE clean-up Manfred. Your post is added to the ones I've printed for future reference. My only question is did you "reduce noise" --is that what you mean by cleaning the dust from the scanner? Did you do anything with the "render" lighting options (that is what it is called on PSE-anyway)?

Thanks. All I tried to do is give Kris some ideas as where to take this image. Colour correction was a good start, but the image did need to be opened up, so I made a couple of suggestions on where to start.

No I did not reduce noise. If I scale things up, I do see some dust and other scanning issues that need cleanup.

I'm viewing the image on a tiny, old, ultra-cheap MSI Wind netbook with a 10" screen, so the noise is not really an issue because the image is tiny. The most sophisticated software that I can get to load on it is the nine year old Photoshop CS. The image I am working with is a tiny 556K one. I suspect that I would try to do more if I could get at my regular computer, but I am pretty well bed-ridden right now because of some major surgery I had on my foot last week.

[ggt]

Wow, must have been the week for foot surgery --my son as well. Hope you are doing as well as he, pain-wise, he is off pain meds. Take care of you!

[Manfred M]

Wow, must have been the week for foot surgery --my son as well. Hope you are doing as well as he, pain-wise, he is off pain meds. Take care of you!

Yes, I got off the pain meds as quickly as I could. They stop the pain but the brain doesn't work all that well. The downside is I can't put my foot down for more than a few minutes at a time before the pain and swelling chase me back to bed.

I have 5 more weeks in a plaster cast and then I get a walking cast / boot for another 6 weeks. Hopefully I can get back into a shoe before the snow starts.

I hope your son's recover goes well.

[Kris V]

To add to the fun - I have one more week with my right elbow in a cast.
No biggy, I'm a lefty, so I wasn't too handicapped.
On a plus side: Hubby had to mop the floors and vacuum.....

[ggt]

OMGosh. Maybe it's the CIC forum . . .is there something in the water here? LOL

[ajohnw]

Here's another based from Manfred's.



Boosted the darker areas end with a levels tool, removed some larger white spots, sharpened slightly, selected sky and blurred out noise and boosted blue, boosted over all saturation a little and clipped the blue line of the top of the shot. It looked like is may have been a bright day so adjusted to try and obtain that, Might be best remembered that way,

John

[Manfred M]

Here's another based from Manfred's.



Boosted the darker areas end with a levels tool, removed some larger white spots, sharpened slightly, selected sky and blurred out noise and added some blue, boosted over all saturation a little and clipped the blue line of the top of the shot. It looked like is may have been a bright day so adjusted to try and obtain that, Might be best remembered that way,

John

Nice work - we read the scene a bit differently. I had assumed a bit of an overcast day, based on the shape of the histogram (fairly even shaped and no highlight spikes to the right, in fact the highlights drop off quite gently) and lack of distinct shadows anywhere other than perhaps a bit of a darker area below the horse.

[Kris V]

All,
Thanks for the advice and edits. I now have a better idea as to how to proceed. As far as I remember, the sky WAS overcast.
Matter of fact, it started raining before her parcours was ended.
The photo was taken in the late 70's.
And BTW - she won this round! My daughter still has the ribbon and stable plaque.

[ajohnw]

It still is overcast in the shot - how much it was at the time pass. Here in the UK a bright overcast day is a bright day. In fact for much of this year it's a great day.

John

[Kris V]

Here's another based from Manfred's.



Boosted the darker areas end with a levels tool, removed some larger white spots, sharpened slightly, selected sky and blurred out noise and boosted blue, boosted over all saturation a little and clipped the blue line of the top of the shot. It looked like is may have been a bright day so adjusted to try and obtain that, Might be best remembered that way,

John

Thanks for the edit and the work flow explanation.
What would I do without CiC and the helpful members????

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Kris,

Although you may lose a bit of the composition by the ensuing crop*, I'd correct the tilt, if mine.

* although you could clone in to fill the 'white triangles'

Cheers,

[Kris V]

Hi Kris,

Although you may lose a bit of the composition by the ensuing crop*, I'd correct the tilt, if mine.

* although you could clone in to fill the 'white triangles'

Cheers,

Yea Dave, I'm working on it - on the latest edit I did straighten the horizon, and cloned out the bicycle on the right hand side.
I'm also going to try to clone out the chair and the top of my husbands head (you can see it behind the horse).
Dad was full of advice before she left the paddock to enter the competition arena.....