Restoring Faded Colour Photos

[Saint Jack]

Hi everyone. Now that I'm confined to home because of the Covid-19 virus, probably like most of you reading this, I would like to start a project that has been on my mind for a long time. I have a number of old colour photographs that are now faded. They have sentimental value as some of them are of people no longer with us. I would like to restore them to their original colouring (or as close to it as possible) but I don't know what software t use. A quick Google search reveals a lot of software to repair old photo's but not to perform colour restoration which is what I believe I need.
Can any of you whizzards out there recommend a particular software that is easy to use (I'm woefully IT illiterate) and, most important, free to download.for personal use? Many thanks.

[Jhieminga]

The catch here is that you're looking for something that is free.... The very quick solution that I would use in your situation is open the file in Adobe Photoshop and use the 'Auto Tone' correction. This nearly always produces a better and more natural looking image. I think that many other software packages will have something similar, but as I'm a happy Photoshop user, I'm not that familiar with the free alternatives.

If you're not that happy tinkering with computers and software, I would suggest going for something with some good quality automatic tools. Adobe run a subscription based service these days, you could consider paying for a single month or a short period so you can process your photos, and then cancel the subscription again. I don't know but perhaps they have a trial version that you could play with first so you know what you're in for.
I suspect it's something like this that you're looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUjhwqp7rUg This uses Lightroom but there are similar tutorials for Photoshop.

[Jimbo2Papa]

Are you on a Windows computer or an Apple computer?

Both have software already onboard that could do the job.

[Saint Jack]

Jhieminga Many thanks, the finished result as shown in the short video is exactly what I'm trying to achieve. I'll explore Photoshop options.

Jimbo2Papa I'm using Windows 10. What is the title of the software you're referring to?

[Jimbo2Papa]

See what you can do with the onboard Windows Photo -

https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/56769/adjust-photo-color-windows-10/How to adjust image color with Windows 10 Photo app?PC users who don't want to install any third party photo editing programs can enhance the colors in their photos with the built-in Photos app.

Step 1: All you need to do to open the photo in Photo app is to double-click on it in the folder in which it is stored, alternatively you can double-click on its desktop icon or you can launch the app from the Start menu. Once the picture you want to edit is displayed in the Photo app, click on the Edit button.

Step 2: Select the Color option, and head over to the left side of the screen to choose whether you want to use Temperature, Tint, Saturation or Color Boost options.

Step 3: Clicking on any of these icons will enable you to see a circular slider that lets you know precisely how much you've changed the original color values of the photo. The Color Boost feature allows you to select a color and boost it or tone it down depending on your current needs.

Step 4: Click on the Save icon to save a copy of the picture you just edited to your hard drive.


If you have Adobe Photoshop then the above tutorial JHI posted will work in it.

[jimjim1]

I have the artistic talent of a small potato and have almost no knowledge of these things however I read that GIMP is in some cases a photoshop competitor, and free.

https://wp-modula.com/free-photoshop-alternatives/

Of course as I am sure you know the faded photos have lost information that cannot be recovered. Colour prints are particularly susceptible to damage, I suspect it's UV that does it. The negatives would likely be OK. I don't mean that skilful artistry or magic software can't improve things, I sometimes brighten or dim photos with the Windows Live Essentials photo program for example.

[Capn Bloggs]

The best software I've come across for this is on my Canon LIDE scanner. It's called fading correction and has 3 levels. You set it before you do the scan. It's great.

[Repos]

I use Photoshop Elements 2018 which is a one-off purchase of about 100 sterling if I remember correctly. It has 'expert' and 'quick' and guided modes.
I downloaded GIMP and is has some great features but in spite of doing quite a bit of editing I didn't find it particularly intuitive.
Saint Jack (https://www.pprune.org/members/303951-saint-jack) - Some of the things Jimbo2Papa said -Try to teach yourself a little about colour and saturation so you will identfy what is wrong with the photo before you start.
Someof the autofix software features don't always get it right so some manual adjustment is needed.
Typically in old colour photos, the blues and cyans fade and the reds and yellows come through so these need adjusting.
Experiment with scanning at slightly higher resolution or as a TIFF file, but don't go crazy, it's diminishing returns on quality.
Remember with scanning, especially negatives that dust is the enemy. You can remove it afterwards but any dust and scratch removal compromises quality.
If you aren't keen on doing to much editing then maybe tyake the advice of Capn Bloggs and do as much correction as you can at the scanning stage.

[Capn Bloggs]

An example of Canon's Scangear scanning program on a Lide 400 scanner (Windows 10).

Unadjusted scan:
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1442x1019/bridge_orig_97c77f821a5f622240d2f4b8ba62b257cc905129.jpg

Scan with "Fading Correction" set to Low:
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1442x1019/bridge_fadecorrlow_5495b54ddeeb5c6458308aba8aecc55ab358f120. jpg

You need a Canon scanner to run Scangear (I bought the 400 late last year off Ebay).

[Jhieminga]

The correction that Scangear applies is not much different from what you can do with Photoshop or GIMP or another image editing tool. When scanning, please do yourself a favour and use a lossless format (TIFF) and don't scan to a JPG file, as you lose information straight away. Open the TIFF file in the editor of your choice, apply corrections and then use 'Save As...' to save a copy, thereby preserving the original scan. That way you can always go back and try again.

You can also create a copy of the TIFF file first, before starting the editing process.

When using scangear, you're basically taking the same steps but applying them all at once. It doesn't change a thing about the way your image is scanned, and you don't have the luxury of going back and trying again without re-scanning. The other question is whether scangear will preserve all the image data. Sometimes scanning software is less capable than a professional editing suite, and you may lose some detail through their automatic process, which you would not have lost when using different software.

What it boils down to:

Use the scanning software you're comfortable with. Save to a lossless format and set the dpi high enough so you capture all the detail. For a photograph, anything over 600dpi is overkill as the resolution of the print you started with (assuming it's not printed at a very large size) won't show anything smaller.
You can get into very complicated arguments on how to process the resulting image, but make sure you work on a copy, preserve the original scan.
My advice would be to find an image editor that allows you to use an automatic tool (Auto Tone in photoshop, setting a white and black point in Lightroom, or using the automatic tool in that, etcetera) as that way you won't have to get into the details of how you work with color values and levels. The problem here is that each bit of software has a different way of describing the various tools, settings and parameters. Find one that works, watching tutorials on youtube is a good way to get an idea of how difficult something can get. See if you can find trial versions if possible.

[Capn Bloggs]

Horses for courses, Jhieminga, I'm here for a good time, not a long time! :ok: I've done 1000, got 2000 to go, a fair number of those pretty faded.

Scangear (https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART142958) lets you preview most of the adjustments you mentioned as well. I rarely use them; perhaps a bit of a saturation boost. Another plus is you can do 3 pics (4 of those little 3½" x 5") at once.

600DPI Jpeg looks fine on my big TV = good enough for me.

[obgraham]

In scanning about 8000 slides and prints, I found that the color correction software that came with my Epson V500 scanner was very effective on most faded images. A few of the slides were unrecoverable. Those I scanned in black and white.

The most important images I scanned in both JPEG and in TIFF, just so I would not have to come back to the job. All the JPEG images have been fine for my purposes, and the file sizes much more manageable..

[Saint Jack]

Many, many thanks to all of you who have responded. I have download GIMP 2.10 and a very quick "dry-run" has yielded some very promising results - but the main page has more buttons, options, selections etc. than I've ever seen and it will take some time to come to grips with all of them. But hey, I'm under house arrest so, sorry that should be self-isolation, so I have the time.......