Fall Colors, Addison Oaks Park, Oakland County, MI

[pendennis]

Like others, my wife and I enjoy chasing colors around Michigan. This was done on Ektachrome with a Mamiya 645 Super. Originally, this was glass mounted and projected on an old no name medium format projector. I scanned the image using the Epson V850 and VueScan software, instead of SilverFast. I only cleaned up the image and cropped it. I didn't want any edited enhancements. The breeze was nonexistent.

[DanK]

If you want comments on the image rather than the processing, you might get more if you post in the Nature and Architecture forum.

If you are looking for comments on the processing: it seems to me that this has a pronounced magenta cast. I reduced the magenta in photoshop and got this:



I haven't yet gotten to scanning my slides, so I don't have any suggestion about where the color cast was introduced--e.g., by aging of the slide vs. the scanning software.

If you object to edits of your posts, I'll remove this.

[pendennis]

No problem at all with the comment. I scanned with both VueScan and SilverFast, but was really disappointed with the results from SilverFast. SilverFast was really biased toward magenta, and I did reduce it some in Photoshop. There are several more slides from the same batch, so I'll take a closer look at them on the light box.

The image also has been printed on Canon Pro Platinum, and the magenta didn't come in strong at all. It's more balanced, similar to your edit.

Back to Photoshop!

[Shadowman]

Nicely composed.

[Manfred M]

I moved this to the Nature and Architecture forum, which is a better fit. I'm not sure what an "edited enhancement" is as exposure correction, colour correction, dodging, burning, perspective correction, changing contrast, etc. were all part of normal everyday practice in the "wet darkroom". Each and every film and associated chemistry had their own characteristics and rendered scenes that were definitely not the same as the human eye would see them.

The digital darkroom definitely lets us do more and to me using these tools is all part of the photo restoration workflow. Transparency films have terrible dynamic range (somewhere around 4 eV if memory serves me correctly). All colour films, even when stored "correctly" do show signs of aging as time passes. The digitization process can also introduce colour casts, a softening of the image and other artifacts. Dust and other contamination also show up and are clearly visible in this image. Removing these in PP is something that can and should be done as part of the restoration workflow.

As Dan has mentioned you definitely have a noticeable magenta cast in the original, as well as signs of dust and breakdown of the original slide. I see what could be a water streak in the top left hand quadrant, a purple band along the lower right hand side and some purple speckling in the bottom left hand corner. There is definitely a magenta cast left in the clouds reflecting in the water, even after the overall colour cast has been reduced.

[pendennis]

...I'm not sure what an "edited enhancement" is as exposure correction, colour correction, dodging, burning, perspective correction, changing contrast, etc. were all part of normal everyday practice in the "wet darkroom"...

I use the term to cover all the things you mention; and like others, I sometimes get "carried away" with color enhancement, contrast changes, etc. I did use the clean up features to remove as much dust, spots, etc.

In this image, all I did was crop to take out some extraneous detail in the original transparency.

Thank you for your comments, and I appreciate your moving to a different sub-forum.

[Manfred M]

I use the term to cover all the things you mention; and like others, I sometimes get "carried away" with color enhancement, contrast changes, etc. I did use the clean up features to remove as much dust, spots, etc.

In this image, all I did was crop to take out some extraneous detail in the original transparency.

The photo restorer (much like the image retoucher) always needs to be aware of the "clients" requirements.

The default is usually returning the image as close to the original state as possible. In other cases, the "aged" look is required and the only thing that is required is to stabilize the image in its present state and "freeze" the deterioration at the current level.

Regardless of the approach taken, in this type of work subtlety is usually the key and understanding the wishes of the "client". I remember taking great care to remove a coffee stain from an old image only to be told that the person had gotten so used to the coffee stain that she did not like the image without it.