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RouchieFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Repairing an old photo that has faded to red

I have been given an old photo that has faded to what seems to be mainly red.  I need to repair this photo using PS / PSP and wondered what the best approach is.  I've tried Histogram functions, RGB alterations etc but am getting nowhere.  Everything I try seems to make the photo look like it was originally black and white!

The photo at present looks as though it has been 'greyscaled' then given a red hue above it.

Any ideas...?
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Lobo042399

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Hmm I see.  I thought that with 'red' predominantly remaining in the image, then the light over time had faded what would be 'green' and 'blue' on a digital image.  I hoped there would be some simple way of applying a green and blue filter to the image as a whole to simulate the reverse effect, but I'm not sure where to start, and which tool is best to use...!
If I use the RGB tools I get some horrid effects, but subtracting red then altering the curves leaves a nice looking b+w version.  It's just that the original was apparently in colour!
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Lobo042399

Yes, you're right on the colours that have faded. The problem is, those colours were not evenly distributed all over the image, there was more blue or more green in certain areas than in other ones. If you use Curves over the whole image then the increase of green/blue will be even, which is not what we want. That's why it's important to know what colours go where. Only after that you can modify the colouring on those areas.
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MHenry,

I tried that tutorial thanks, and although quite useful for the example image, my own image is much more complicated and includes heavily patterned clothing etc, which would take a massive amount of time (and guesswork) to re-colour manually.  The US flag can be re-coloured manually quite easily, but crazy 60's clothing and hairstyles I can't even begin to guess at without offending those involved - it was well before my time...!!!  ;-D

I'll leave the question open for a while in case there are any further points, but otherwise the answers have made interesting reading...
Rouchie,

Yeah, it's labor intensive. And if you're trying for perfect realism it won't work. But it is fun and can generate pretty good results if you take the time.

I did a thing for my father. An old Army picture. I had no idea what the car colors were, just that they were dark. Didn't know what color the barracks were etc.  Half the fun of it was trying to guess what colors were. For larger areas like the grass & sky I just did a wash. It wasn't perfect. It turned out looking pretty good though.
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That's a very interesting article indeed.  My £200 HP scanner that I thought was seriously cool has just dropped in my estimations!  I think I might post another 500pt question with a link to the image and let some Experts try their luck...  

I'm can't get a 16bit/channel scan without investing big money, so based on what the article says there may be a handful of people who can achieve the same result in 8bits/channel.

'Know-how will prevail where time and patience don't...'!
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billmercer

Thanks for that, however it didn't work too well.  The shadows in the photo certainly now appear correctly, but the red is still present, now joined by an equal amount of green in certain areas.  I think the original has possibly faded a little too much for my scanner to capture the remaining colours accurately.
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Cheers guys