Converting
old photographs to colour
Looking
through a box of old photographs my mother had given
me I came across a negative print of her wearing
a WRAF uniform and obviously taken in the 1939-1944
war. I remembered seeing the negative before but
had never seen a positive. I decided to see what
I could do with the picture using PSP.
First step was to scan the image.
The scan at 2400 dpi was 5408 x 7872 pixels and
40.6 Mbytes.
Next
I used Colors > Negative Image to get a positive,
for the first time seeing a normal image.
At this point I resized the image
to 20% of its original size producing an image 1082
x 1574 and now a more manageable 1.6 Mbytes in size
Using Colors > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast
I next increased the contrast by 15% leaving the
brightness at 0%. My aim was to get the improvement
in contrast I required without making the tree area
too dark.
Although the image was fairly clear
of imperfections since the original had lain undisturbed
in a box for 60 years, I now used the clone brush
to clear up dust marks and a fingerprint on the
path. I zoomed in on the original 2:1 and used a
round brush of 5-12 pixels size and 50% hardness.
This method takes longer than Effects > Enhance
Photo > Automatic Scratch Removal but in my opinion
works better. It was also at this point I discovered
my mother had freckles when she was younger.
The
resultant image was a big improvement on the original
negative - but why stop there? Next stage was to
convert it to a colour photograph!
The first step in this stage was to
use the Magic wand and lasso (freehand selection)
tool to select the different areas of the image
and save the selections.
First the magic wand was used with
tolerance set at 30 to select the sky areas. Holding
down Shift while clicking with the wand tool allowed
me to select areas where the sky appeared through
the trees. There is no need for great accuracy at
this point. Once the bulk of the sky had been selected
the selection was expanded by 1 to pick up loose
pixels of sky. The sky area was saved as sky.sel
using Selection > Save to Disc...
Next the selection was cleared (using
Ctrl D) and the magic wand, this time at a tolerance
of 15, was used again to select just the areas of
sky without tree branches. To clear up loose pixels
this time the lasso tool, set point to point and
with feathering set to 2, was used while holding
down the shift key. The selection was then inverted
- Selection > Invert. Next the rectangle and
lasso tools were used this time holding down Ctrl
to deselect the remaining non-foliage areas. This
step takes time and care so it was worth while saving
the selection to disc as 'foliage.sel' periodically.
The sky area was then added to the
foliage selection using shift and the rectangle
selection tool. Again the selection was inverted
(Selection > Invert) and the rectangle and lasso
tools were used to select the wall areas of the
image and save the selection as 'wall.sel'.
In a similar way selections were made
of path.sel, skin.sel, hair.sel, fence.sel and uniform.sel.
When selecting the uniform care was taken not to
include the buckle, cap badge or buttons.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
sky
|
foliage
|
wall
|
fence
|
skin
|
uniform
|
Having made and saved selections the
final stage was to increase the number of colours
to 16 Million. The selections were reloaded one
by one and promoted to a layer. I made sure I selected
the background layer before loading each selection.
The layers were named and stacked in the order shown
below.
The 'sky' layer was now selected and
all other layers made invisable. I chose Effects
> Enhance Photo > Manual Color Correction.
In the window which opened I choose 'Preserve lightness'
but not 'Preserve saturation'. 'Sky' was selected
as the 'Color category' and from the 'Preset colors'
I chose 'BlueMed'. To see the effect I found I needed
to select the entire area in the left hand pane.
Next I selected the foliage layer
and in the same way coloured it using the 'Foliage'
setting and 'LushGEvrgr'. My picture now looked
like this:
In the same way I selected the path,
fence, wall, skin, hair and uniform layers and coloured
them using the settings in the table below:
|
Layer
|
sky
|
foliage
|
path
|
wall
|
fence
|
skin
|
hair
|
uniform
|
|
Category
|
Sky
|
Foliage
|
Metals
|
Metals
|
Woods
|
Skin
|
Skin
|
Fruits
|
|
Preset
|
BlueMed
|
LushGEvrgr
|
Pewter
|
SilverDull
|
WalnutNat
|
CaucNormLt
|
CaucPink
|
Blueberry
|
The end result was a colour photograph
from a time when colour photography just wasn't
available!
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