Photo too orange

[Frankie]

I scanned this and a few other Kodachrome slides taken around 1980. Can't figure out how to get the colour more normal looking. I tried Curves RGB, reducing red, but it didn't work for me. Any help appreciated.

[HyReZ]

Your image is basically a monochrome of orange with its tints tones and shades. The face is very grainy and in the shade.
If this scan is a fair representation of slide it will take a bunch of work make it appear better.

I get my best colors for this image when I used Adjustments/Color Balance +v1.1 by dpy.

 

With the Tone Balance Highlights option selected.
Cyan - Red set to -26

Magenta - Green set to 64
Yellow - Blue set to 100

[IHaveNoName]

I'd too suggest trying that Color Balance +v1.1 plugin which allows you to make very large corrections to Magenta/Cyan/Yellow rendering selectively for highlights, mid-tones and shadows. But getting that skin tone anywhere near correct even for the warmth of the apparent afternoon sunshine and keeping the (white?) T-Shirt neutral will be a seriously difficult task.

 

Beyond me,  I've just tried using that plugin and the setting HyRez suggested and my own practical knowledge of photographic colour printing and I couldn't find any settings that produced an acceptable skin tone, kept the T-Shirt white and indeed create any general semblance of a natural looking result.. 

 

I can't believe the original Kodachrome slide actually looks like that; dye stability and colour accuracy were its big selling points. Unless the slide has been left in the sun for a long time and is genuinely that orange I'd go back and rescan it and adjust the color balance or use whatever color controls the scanner supports.

 

As it is I'd guess that there has been some digital enhancement to bring out facial detail. Looking at the backlit hair it suggests the face of the subject was likely in significant shadow with only the white T-Shirt, clouds and whatever other nearby reflective surfaces there were providing the fill-in. There's certainly no indication in the eyes of any fill-in flash.

 

Quality dedicated photo-scanners like those made by Epsom include all sorts of colour and image enhancement/restoration options which I'd try before attempting to fix such problems on a poor quality image file scan using PDN.

Edited January 29, 2019 by IHaveNoName

[HyReZ]

Indeed Kodachrome was a excellent film stock. It looks like the film used was either outdated or over heated (or both).

I do have an Epson Perfection V100 document/photo/film scanner that is still a very good device, but I use my

Polaroid slide duplicator and my digital camera for most of 35mm slide copying.

 

I set up a sheet of clear frosted acrylic between my LED light source and my copying stand mounted camera and shoot at 20 mega pixels HDR.
It works better than my scanner. It is a good idea to insert a washed out slide first and focus on just the film grain before copying.

Universal slide duplicator device (~$35 US)
Clear/colorless frosted acrylic sheet ~ 12 x 12 inches (~$10 US)
(840 lumens / 9 watt / 5000k) LED daylight bulb ($2 US)
You can use a tripod if you don't have a copying stand.

Note:

About the price of a dinner for 2 and last a whole lot longer! 🙂

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by HyReZ

[IHaveNoName]

A long, long time ago once or twice I actually used a professional level 35mm slide copying set up ie. for film to film copies which included a very low level pre-fogging flash to reduce the contrast that the copying process would inevitably cause. I think it may even have had built in colour correction filters like a colour enlarger which BTW could also be adapted for copying purposes too.

 

It was so long ago I can't even remember the name of that copy system but it was widely used by professional studios/darkrooms and amateurs with money at the time.

 

Us aspiring photographers on a budget had to make use of just those ^ sorts of cheaper alternatives. I had a BPM manual bellows + 50mm enlarger lens and and purpose designed 35mm slide holder.

 

There were also problems using 'clear' frosted acrylic sheet for diffusing the lighting as such plastics always introduced colour casts which had to be corrected with CC filters for true colour accuracy. Working out what the colour cast was and how much correction was needed was a skill in itself.

 

Digital photography with white balance and easy colour correction before and after the image (file) creation have consigned those sorts of problems thankfully, mostly, to history.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by IHaveNoName

[HyReZ]

I think for Frankie, color cast and color correction filters are the lest of his worries now. For the home user who does not shoot for NatGeo, a simple rig will suit their needs and offer results better than that of a consumer model scanner.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Here's my take:

 

Open Adjustments > Levels and move the middle Output slider down to the indicated position.

 

 

Next open Adjustments Hue & Saturation and lower the saturation down to around 72.

 

[BoltBait]

Here's my try:

 

Spoiler

 

Honestly, your best bet is to take another picture...  

 

[HyReZ]

The more I look at Frankie's photo the more puzzling it appears. Why is the red face and hair more saturated than other areas of the photo. It appears that it was an attempt of compositing. On a closer inspection the reddish face and hair look like the Wand Tool was use to separate the face from a background and then over-saturated for some reason, or the whole flame was over-saturated and he wanted to pull a part out and use it in another image. Then this facial area was placed on top of a different background and torso. If we had both images it may be easier to help him create the effect that he is attempting to achieve.

Edited January 31, 2019 by HyReZ

[Maximilian]

I first ran Surface Blur with a Radius of 1 and a Threshold of 5 to reduce some of the graininess on her face. Then I applied Local Contrast Enhancement as shown in the pic below:

 

 

The result is this:

 

 

Then I ran G'MIC (Boost-Fade filter with settings as shown below):

 

 

Which resulted in this:

 

 

(There's still a good amount of graininess on her face, so these are intended merely as possible starting points for further improvement)

 

Alternatively, I also tried applying the Boost-Fade filter alone, with no previous effect, but I think the outcome turned out rather colorless, although her face seems to look a bit less grainy than with the previous method:

 

 

So, in order to enhance colors, I applied the Laplacian Pyramid Filter with an Outlier reduction of 50 and an Extra contrast of 0.55 (all other settings at defaults), rendering the following result:

 

 

I tried other methods as well, but didn't like the outcomes very much. I hope my take on the matter may help somehow (I feel I prefer the second method but that's up to each eye's taste).

[HyReZ]

6 hours ago, Maximilian said:

Alternatively, I also tried applying the Boost-Fade filter alone, with no previous effect, but I think the outcome turned out rather colorless, although her face seems to look a bit less grainy than with the previous method:

 

 

 

 

 

This is really quite a good result! With this image and the use of other image effect techniques offered by other contributers to this thread, a nice composited image can be constructed. Good work, that destroys my theory!

 

[Maximilian]

I'm very glad you like my result, @HyReZ! Many thanks for your encouraging comments!

[HyReZ]

This is my quick and dirty result of compositing and over painting. Further retouching will be required but this not bad for 30 minutes.