Scanning faded slides or negatives

PhilBurton · Apr 13, 2019

For Ektachrome slides that have some fading or color shifting, what settings would I change to get the best possible scan, meaning a scan as close as possible to the colors of an unfaded slide? I have several thousand Kodak Ektachrome slides, many of which already display color shift due to dye fading.

For color negatives? I have several hundred Kodacolor negatives processed in C-22 and C-41. The oldest negatives are over 50 years old.

Same question for for 50 year old Agfachrome slides that have faded very badly, I have several boxes of Agfachrome shot in Paris in 1966, and these images have historical significance.

Phil Burton

removed account4 · Apr 13, 2019

Phil
I won't be much help in your quest to get your slides to look like they did 49 or 50 years ago. My only suggestion is to just treat your materials like they were recently exposed and developed and to be "interpreted" when you scan them. I can understand that you would like the digital images to look like the originals but .. you might think "outside the box". Many years ago I scanned and digitally remastered old family photographs. Some of these originals were old and faded or yellowed or damaged, or a combination of these problems. Rather than attempting to make them look like they might have when the cabinet cards, silver gelatin tintypes, albumen prints, gaslight prints and drugstore color prints were fresh and new, I didn't worry about it, and they turned out great. The same thing happens when I scan or work on a digital file that might be a few years old or a print that is 30, I work on it as if it was just scanned and don't think about how I interpreted it previously. I don't think that was the answer you were hoping for, and not sure it was any help.

Good luck !
John

jim10219 · Apr 13, 2019

Scan them like normal, without any additional manipulations. After that, you're best bet is to manipulate them in PS using the curves tool. The problem with doing that many is each one will likely benefit from a unique curve. That's going to take an awfully long time. You might be able to get away with using a couple of general curves that will work on many slides, and save the curve as a preset. If you discover that most of the slides look okay with one of the presets you made, you could try to batch process them all with that preset and save them as copies. Then you could go back and see which ones look good enough ad which ones need to be redone.

The problem you're going to face is that it's likely that many of them haven't faded in exactly the same way. So a one step solution probably won't yield good results. Hence why it costs a lot of money to have professionals do this.

You might could use the levels tool instead of the curves tool. It's not as precise, but it's easier to figure out for a beginner.

juan · Apr 14, 2019

I, too, have many old and faded slides. I’ve found that most of them can be brought within a reasonably acceptable range by simply using the “auto” correction modes in Photoshop. Some slides need more correction - some I’ve never gotten right.

It makes me wish I’d spent the extra money on Kodachrome - all of those are still perfect.

MattKing · Apr 14, 2019

This photograph came from my late father's extensive "collection" It is a picture of my late and mother comes from an approximately 68 year old Kodachrome slide. The slide itself is almost transparent, with an overall green cast.
There are hints of colour and density information there, which really aggressive, manually adjusted post-processing (Corel Paintshop Pro) helped reveal.

Most of my father's Kodachrome slides are Kodachrome II or more recent. With almost no exceptions, they are in far better shape.
This one - showing my mother and my brother - is 60 years old:

Adrian Bacon · Apr 17, 2019

PhilBurton said:
For Ektachrome slides that have some fading or color shifting, what settings would I change to get the best possible scan, meaning a scan as close as possible to the colors of an unfaded slide? I have several thousand Kodak Ektachrome slides, many of which already display color shift due to dye fading.

For color negatives? I have several hundred Kodacolor negatives processed in C-22 and C-41. The oldest negatives are over 50 years old.

Same question for for 50 year old Agfachrome slides that have faded very badly, I have several boxes of Agfachrome shot in Paris in 1966, and these images have historical significance.

Phil Burton

If you've got fading going on, then photoshops curves tool will be your friend. You can do the same thing in Lightroom's develop module with the tone curve panel. Learn it, know it, love it. That is where you'll fix most color casts and restore contrast from fading.

Adrian Bacon · Apr 17, 2019

MattKing said:
This photograph came from my late father's extensive "collection" It is a picture of my late and mother comes from an approximately 68 year old Kodachrome slide. The slide itself is almost transparent, with an overall green cast.
There are hints of colour and density information there, which really aggressive, manually adjusted post-processing (Corel Paintshop Pro) helped reveal.

View attachment 221413

Most of my father's Kodachrome slides are Kodachrome II or more recent. With almost no exceptions, they are in far better shape.
This one - showing my mother and my brother - is 60 years old:

View attachment 221414

Matt, the top photo, is that after correction? Looks like it could use a touch more magenta.

L Gebhardt · Apr 17, 2019

With ccd scanners I would make a 16bit raw scan with all correction settings and adjustments turned off. From there correct in photoshop. Any thing you do in the scanner app, with the exception of ir dust removal, can be better done in photoshop. Use layers for the best results. I also scan negatives as positives and correct in photoshop.

MattKing · Apr 17, 2019

Adrian Bacon said:
Matt, the top photo, is that after correction? Looks like it could use a touch more magenta.

Yes - post correction.
In fact, there is so much correction applied, that I'm basically in "Spinal Tap" zone - "11" on the scale that goes to 10.
More magenta just makes it more weird.

Wallendo · Apr 17, 2019

I find it easiest to make unaltered 16-bit per channel scans (also called 48 bit). I load the files into PhotoShop and then use the "Levels" control and adjust the white and black points of each of the primary colors individually using the histograms. As long as the images were made in relatively "white" lights, this works well. Sunrises and sunsets where the light is quite warm do not work as well. It seems a little time consuming, but using keyboard shortcuts, I can adjust most images in less than a minute (faster than my scanner can scan a slide). I then make final tweaks in Aperture or LightRoom if needed (it usually isn't necessary).

Adrian Bacon · Apr 17, 2019

MattKing said:
Yes - post correction.
In fact, there is so much correction applied, that I'm basically in "Spinal Tap" zone - "11" on the scale that goes to 10.
More magenta just makes it more weird.

Just out of curiosity, what tooling do you use?

Adrian Bacon · Apr 17, 2019

MattKing said:
Yes - post correction.
In fact, there is so much correction applied, that I'm basically in "Spinal Tap" zone - "11" on the scale that goes to 10.
More magenta just makes it more weird.

Never mind, I missed the paint shop pro in your earlier post. I’m not familiar with it.

I was going to say, if you’re using photoshop, if it was mostly clear, and you scanned it with the image mostly maxed out on the histogram (in raw, if you scan that way), you’ll have lots of discrete tone values to work with. A gamma adjustment will pull all the image information down into a more viewable range and put a whole pile of lost contrast back in. From there the curves layer can be used to re-color balance things. The white trellis in the background can serve as the per channel reflected white, the deep shadow in the building/garage window can serve as the black/shadow and the fence rail behind her can serve as a middle gray. If you set the those spots to the same values on the tone curve for each color channel, it should straighten it out quite a lot.

MattKing · Apr 17, 2019

Adrian Bacon said:
Just out of curiosity, what tooling do you use?

When it comes to photography, I'm afraid that mostly I try to avoid working on the computer.
When I'm doing something in the digital world and faced with something challenging, I usually work with the controls available in Corel's Paintshop Pro. In this case, it would have been the slider based adjustments for Highlights/Midtones/Shadows, Contrast and Red/Green/Blue. I don't ignore levels, curves and other more technical controls, but I rarely use them.
I'm not particularly scientific about it - I tend to just experiment with the controls that I'm comfortable with to see if I can achieve something appropriate.
In fact, for most things I'm at least as likely to just "tweak" an image using the very accessible and very quick tools in FastStone Image Viewer.
The colour you see in that scan of my mother is way more than appears to the eye when you look at the original slide. If you look at the original, it looks almost like clear, slightly green glass, with a ghost-like image on it.
Unfortunately (for the purpose of this thread), I didn't save my original scan, so I can't post a before and after comparison.
I don't want to give the impression that I don't value the information that you and a few of the other highly capable users of digital tools contribute to these threads. I have a tendency to note the workflows that you use, maybe try them out as an experiment and then for the most part revert to using something simpler.

Adrian Bacon · Apr 17, 2019

MattKing said:
When it comes to photography, I'm afraid that mostly I try to avoid working on the computer.
When I'm doing something in the digital world and faced with something challenging, I usually work with the controls available in Corel's Paintshop Pro. In this case, it would have been the slider based adjustments for Highlights/Midtones/Shadows, Contrast and Red/Green/Blue. I don't ignore levels, curves and other more technical controls, but I rarely use them.
I'm not particularly scientific about it - I tend to just experiment with the controls that I'm comfortable with to see if I can achieve something appropriate.
In fact, for most things I'm at least as likely to just "tweak" an image using the very accessible and very quick tools in FastStone Image Viewer.
The colour you see in that scan of my mother is way more than appears to the eye when you look at the original slide. If you look at the original, it looks almost like clear, slightly green glass, with a ghost-like image on it.
Unfortunately (for the purpose of this thread), I didn't save my original scan, so I can't post a before and after comparison.
I don't want to give the impression that I don't value the information that you and a few of the other highly capable users of digital tools contribute to these threads. I have a tendency to note the workflows that you use, maybe try them out as an experiment and then for the most part revert to using something simpler.

No worries. I can tell you what I would do, but totally recognize that you will and should do what works for you with your setup.

Just as a note, with faded slides or scans of faded prints, gamma and curves are the work horses.

jtk · Apr 17, 2019

NIK will get you where you want to go ... The best alternative is Photoshop Elements...I like both.

iandvaag · Apr 17, 2019

I have a different approach to creating digital images of faded slides.

I recently digitized my great-grandfather's collection of several thousand slides. Most were Kodachromes, and they looked great, but there were some Ektachromes that had faded badly.

I use a macro lens and DSLR along with my colour enlarging head. Using the colour enlarging head on its side, it is possible to dial in the correct optical colour filtration to mitigate the severity of the colour shift. If a colour layer has faded linearly in relation to the other layers, this brings them back in balance so you have all three RGB colour channels properly exposed, which gives you the most room to do math on the pixels in your preferred editing program (I use GIMP, which is open source and free), since the image information is sampled properly (i.e. you won't get as many artefacts when you do major curves adjustments.)

Basically, your starting point can go from the faded red slide on the left (how the slide appears to my eye), to the image on the left, which has not been manipulated digitally by me. I just dialed up the cyan on my colour head.

You can use the same strategy for negatives, dialing in about 50Y and 50M to counteract the orange mask, just the same as I do when optically printing!

Scanning faded slides or negatives

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