Color Correction

[sonja]

Ok, so I'm slowly making progress on my pages...

I have images that were scanned from negatives directly by my wedding photographer. The good news is that the colors in these images are fabulous. The bad news is that they are scanned at too low of a resolution to use for full bleed pages.

I've gone back to my photos and scanned them in at a higher resolution, but the colors are a lot flatter than in those from negatives. I've been playing in Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop pro (with curves, and RGB levels and anything else I can find) and haven't been able to get the colors adjusted to my liking.

I know this is a stretch, but if anyone can give me any advice I would appreciate it. I thought it would be a lot easier given that I know what I'm reaching for, but that's certianly not the case.

Cheers,
Sonja

[irusan]

Sonja,

Scans from prints are almost always of poorer quality than scans from negatives or slides. There's a bunch of reasons for this but, I suspect, you are more interested in what you can do instead of why it happened <grin>.

Are you using Photoshop? If so, ask the photographer what type of film (s)he used. Specifically, get the brand (Kodak or Fuji) as well as the make (Fuji Provia, Kodak Portra, etc.)

Then head over to Action Central (www.atncentral.com) - a repository of free Photoshop actions and look for an action that mimics that particular film. For example, when I shot film, I used Fuji Velvia for all landscapes and nature because of its rich depth and highly saturated greens and reds. I missed that when I switched to digital. I found a Photoshop action that applies a series of steps to mimic in my digital images the same color quality I got with Fuji Velvia. If they don't have an action at ATNCentral.com, just Google Photoshop action film name.

Once you apply the film action in Photoshop, you will want to sharpen the scan as well. It's important to remember that a print is an interpretation of the negative and you need to start from quality prints. But, even with the most high quality print, some post-production will be needed.

But, I'll be willing to bet, adding the film's characteristics in Photoshop will go a long way to re-introduce the lack of color depth in your scans.

HTH,

Rob

[Cbellucci]

I understand that your post was made many moths ago and I hope that you have been able to find the answers you were in search of. For future color corrections or any type of fix you need done to a photo, be it re-touching, red eye reduction, airbrushing, etc, I found this great site that it very coast effective and quick. It is called fixPHOTO.biz. I have had much luck with their services.

[PhotoGeek1]

Have you tried adding a little saturation?