Correcting Problematic Colour Images Using Colorize in PSE
Sept 22, 2024 12:08:49 GMT
Sepiana and pontiac1940 like this
Post by Chris on Sept 22, 2024 12:08:49 GMT
I recently colour corrected about 500 old slides for a friend. The problem was the colours had faded and shifted. So it was not possible to perform a global colour balance. The shadows had a purple tint and the highlights had a green tint.
There are many good tutorials on the internet written by experts about how to colour correct problematic images. I don't claim that the method I describe here is the best or most accurate method. However, I found it helped me to speed up the colour correction process and gave acceptable results when working with many images. Typically my workflow is to start in Lightroom 6 and move into PS Elements for the final editing. However, for the sake of simplicity, in this tutorial I will just use PS Elements.
Here is my sample image downloaded from Morguefile.
morguefile.com/p/978376
1- Its always a good idea to copy the Background to a new layer. The first step is to colour correct the image using any of the tools you prefer in PSE. Aim to correct the most important part of the image as it will be impossible to correct all of it in one go. If you feel adventurous, you may choose to correct other parts of the image as well.
Here in PSE I have reduced the yellow cast over the motorcycle using a levels adjustment and adjusting the blue channel.
2- Click on the original background layer and select, "Enhance/Colorize Photo". You will see 4 options. Choose the option that looks the most pleasing and click OK. For this image I chose the third option.
Select the colourised image. With the blend mode set to normal or colour, slowly change the transparency from 0 to 100% to see which looks best. Sometimes 30% 50% 0r 80% works well. For this image I chose 100%.
Here is the result. The image is pleasing but some of the original colours have been lost. AI can't guess all the colours correctly!
3- Make a layer mask on the colourised image and using black set to 50% transparency (or whatever) paint over specific areas to reveal some of the original colours. Here, I painted over the motorbike, helmets, cars, grass and trees. It's slowly getting there.
4- Finally do a little tweaking as you please. For this image I decided to add a new layer with the blend mode set to colour so i could manually colour some parts of the image. Also a brightness/Contrast layer mask to increase the contrast to +10.
Here is the result.
Now if you look closely, you will see the image still needs some tweaking here and there. However, the purpose of this tutorial is share some ideas and to show how blending a colourised image to the original can help to speed up the workflow in some situations.
Kind regards
Chris
There are many good tutorials on the internet written by experts about how to colour correct problematic images. I don't claim that the method I describe here is the best or most accurate method. However, I found it helped me to speed up the colour correction process and gave acceptable results when working with many images. Typically my workflow is to start in Lightroom 6 and move into PS Elements for the final editing. However, for the sake of simplicity, in this tutorial I will just use PS Elements.
Here is my sample image downloaded from Morguefile.
morguefile.com/p/978376
1- Its always a good idea to copy the Background to a new layer. The first step is to colour correct the image using any of the tools you prefer in PSE. Aim to correct the most important part of the image as it will be impossible to correct all of it in one go. If you feel adventurous, you may choose to correct other parts of the image as well.
Here in PSE I have reduced the yellow cast over the motorcycle using a levels adjustment and adjusting the blue channel.
2- Click on the original background layer and select, "Enhance/Colorize Photo". You will see 4 options. Choose the option that looks the most pleasing and click OK. For this image I chose the third option.
Select the colourised image. With the blend mode set to normal or colour, slowly change the transparency from 0 to 100% to see which looks best. Sometimes 30% 50% 0r 80% works well. For this image I chose 100%.
Here is the result. The image is pleasing but some of the original colours have been lost. AI can't guess all the colours correctly!
3- Make a layer mask on the colourised image and using black set to 50% transparency (or whatever) paint over specific areas to reveal some of the original colours. Here, I painted over the motorbike, helmets, cars, grass and trees. It's slowly getting there.
4- Finally do a little tweaking as you please. For this image I decided to add a new layer with the blend mode set to colour so i could manually colour some parts of the image. Also a brightness/Contrast layer mask to increase the contrast to +10.
Here is the result.
Now if you look closely, you will see the image still needs some tweaking here and there. However, the purpose of this tutorial is share some ideas and to show how blending a colourised image to the original can help to speed up the workflow in some situations.
Kind regards
Chris
