New Challenge: Colour Correction

[cathodeRay]

OK, a new challenge for Easter. I am trying to restore the photo below. The original slide/neg has long since gone and all I have is a faded approx 10x8 print, faded by exposure to (sun) light. I have tried all sorts of things including masked selections, hue editing, and all the usual paraphernalia. I may be able to get say the sea or the trees right but then other elements go out and/or the masks are too complicated/and so getting good boundaries is near impossible. I even tried a rather neat piece of software I have called Color Pilot which allows applying one colour palette from a 'donor' to another 'recipient' image and sometimes works miracles but not with this one. Any thoughts on how to go about this one? The real hull colour, by the way, is indeed white (and so a white reference point, and so indirectly a confirmation that the problem is (selective) colour fade), and the coast is Brittany, beautiful colours and light as those who have been there will know.

CO32_scan.jpg

It may of course be a hopeless case, as too much real colour info has gone, but thanks in advance for any input!

cathodeRay

[photoken]

Yeah, it's probably hopeless; and hand-painting the colours might be best.

This is what I came up with after some brief experimenting:

colour restoration.jpg

I threw everything at it -- Histogram equalization, DeHaze, my Colour Cast Correction action (http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.ph ... 737#p34945), and then added a slew of adjustment layers:

• Hue Editor
• Color Balance
• Histogram Correction
• and two Curves

Added:
I think this result shows the impossibility of working on the entire image as a unit. See my next post for adjusting individual image areas.

[photoken]

OK, I think I'm on to something here....

The recent talk about the Nik Collection got me to thinking about using their filters on this image.

First, I used the Vector Lasso tool to make and save as layers, masks for these areas:

• Sky
• Trees
• Rocks
• Boat and water

Then, in turn, I duplicated each layer and converted the duplicate layer into a lasso for the original background image. With the lasso active, I used the Nik Viveza2 filter to adjust the colours, etc. for the selected area.

I finished it off by using a Histogram adjustment layer to Auto-Correct for all layers; and then added a Curves adjustment layer working in Lab mode to adjust the overall gamma.

The layers look like this:

color restoration viv layers.jpg

and the result:

color restoration viv.jpg

I think this shows some potential....

[Paul]

Amazing so far! For an old faded picture with almost no colour left..
- Paul

[cathodeRay]

Ken - impressive! Like you I threw everything I had at it (but not the NIK filters), and ended up with this:

CO32_colours_try_1.jpg

Dividing the image into zones (sky/sea/trees/rocks etc) does seem to be essential but one of the problems we have both encountered is boundary effects, eg between the trees and the sky. I've tried various ways of feathering it but that hard unnatural edge just won't go away. There's a similar hard edge in places between the sea and the rocks. There's also the problem of the sky seen through the trees (on the LH side) - neither of us have managed to include that properly in the sky treatment (not being critical, just examining the challenges). There's also the oddity of the colours on the bottom corners of the spinnakers, as any sailors will have spotted...

As we all agree, the problem here is essentially loss of data ie colour info. We can't just boost the available colour, we've got to add/transplant in colour, or to put it in a slightly different way, paint in colour. While this can be done with real paints on a paper image, doing it digitally is very complex and time-consuming, and furthermore creates an unnatural effect, ie it looks painted (though that can perhaps be turned into a deliberate intentional effect, but that then moves away from photo-realism).

What I am dreaming of(!) is some sort of global (no masking involved) colour gradient mapping thing. The hue editor was the obvious choice, but even with anchor points and working separately on hue and saturation the results tended to get more bizarre the more I did. What I'm thinking of is a way to say make this sky colour this blue, these trees this green, these rocks this sandy colour, and this sea this blue, and perhaps this red (ensign, a known red) this red, with a smooth gradient transition between other colours. Since we know what the colours should like like, we can see what the end result should look like in our mind's eye. The question is how to translate that mental image to the onscreen image. Color Pilot manages it quite well when the hues are predominantly in the same broad area (say a washed out landscape with lots of green in it) but the problem here is there are at least two predominant hue areas, the blues of the sea and the sky, and the greens and sandy browns of the rocks and trees.

As I said in the OP, it may be a hopeless case, but it is also for now an interesting challenge!

cathodeRay

[Eurgail]

I tried my luck, too. And you are right: Without separation you can do nothing and the trees are specifically difficult.
I didn't use any plugins.

[Eurgail]

I improved my version; probably, it's more natural know.

[photoken]

Dividing the image into zones (sky/sea/trees/rocks etc) does seem to be essential but one of the problems we have both encountered is boundary effects, eg between the trees and the sky. I've tried various ways of feathering it but that hard unnatural edge just won't go away. There's a similar hard edge in places between the sea and the rocks. There's also the problem of the sky seen through the trees (on the LH side) - neither of us have managed to include that properly in the sky treatment (not being critical, just examining the challenges). There's also the oddity of the colours on the bottom corners of the spinnakers, as any sailors will have spotted...

Yep. The separation into zones is essential, but it's not really that difficult. The zones I used are composed of definitive edges; so even with the small forum-sized image, the Vector Lasso tool made short work of the masking. The only tricky part is that edge between the trees and the sky (primarily because of all the leaves). I'd suggest starting with a luminosity mask of the trees area to get a precisely defined edge to all the leaves. If necessary, you could apply a Threshold adjustment to it and then convert to a layer.

When you create and save the masks for the areas, you can always soften the edges of those masks when you apply them for the colour correction.

I'd add another area to those that I used in the example: a separate mask for the top half of the spinnaker (from the bottom of the stripe to the top of the sail). While working on this, I got the distinct impression that the stripe and the registration numbers on the spinnaker were originally yellow or possibly orange. In any case, the top half of that sail has faded differently than the bottom half and thus needs its own area.

The sky patches that are showing through the trees are really easy to deal with -- once you've got a sky colour applied and the tree colours corrected, the Replace Color brush will quickly and accurately paint in those spots.

P.S., Both your version and Eurgail's version are warmer in colour, which I like better than mine.

P.P.S., I wouldn't worry about the colours of the corners on the spinnaker. I'm not a sailor, but it makes sense to me that some spinnakers would have their corners colour-coded so that when they're retrieved from stowage it would be easy to know which corner gets attached to which line.

[photoken]

One more attempt....

For this one, I used the same masks as before and added the "Spinnaker top" mask that I mentioned. I did not use any plugins for this and worked exclusively with PL's adjustment layers in "Lab" mode wherever possible.

The layers are complicated, and look like this:

colour restoration 02 layers.jpg

And the result (drum roll, please):

colour restoration 02.jpg

For the sky showing through the trees, the Replace Color brush I talked about doesn't work because of all the adjustment layers and their masks, so I created a transparent layer and painted in the sky colour with the Paint tool at a low intensity.

Colour correcting the trees area was difficult -- I really had to work to get the trees a yellow-green without affecting the sunlit concrete facades.

The boat hull is a little too blue for my liking, but it's getting late here....

[cathodeRay]

Yes, it's getting there (and please don't stay up too late losing your sleep!). For non-sailors, the anomaly on the spinnakers corners is the colours (port and starboard, red and green respectively) are the wrong way round, but the spinnaker (because the sail number is OK) is not!

Looking again at the tricky tree/sky boundary, I think it is probably fair to say that some of the harshness is there in the original scan, perhaps more noticeable on the RH side. Eurgail's second version has perhaps got the best treatment of this tricky boundary region. The rocks (but not the concrete facades) were almost certainly more sandy than grey in colour, especially in the Brittany light, and because Eurgail and I have them more sandy, the overall effect is warmer. As it is almost certainly South Brittany (the clue is in the shadows) the rocks won't be those of the Côte de granit rose which have a distinctive rose pink tint. The hull colour may well have been at the blue end of white, as other photos I have seen of the yacht suggest this was the case. I also wonder whether the original sky would have had more of a gradient in it (lost in the fading, hence all our skies have little/no gradient).

Still working on it!

cathodeRay

[photoken]

cathodeRay,

You're absolutely right about the sky needing a gradient. It was real easy for me to add a gradient mask to my "Sky" adjustment layer. A side benefit of doing this is that it cleaned up the harsh edges of the tree/sky boundary, and it also revealed some cloud structure.

A few subtle tweaks to some of the colour balances, and I've got my final result:

colour restoration 02.jpg

I learned that the Nik Collection filters are not always the best solution because (when used in a non-Photoshop program) they are destructive. One of the great advantages of using PL's adjustment layers is that I can come back to the image the next day with a fresh eye and make the subtle refinements that are needed.

I'm amazed at how much colour can be drawn out of what seemed at first glance to be a "hopeless" case of a faded photo. Of course, the new colours are "false" in the sense that they are merely my opinion of what the original colours should be, but still....

[photoken]

Well, I just couldn't leave this alone....

I made a merged copy of my previous result, and applied my Colour Cast Correction action to neutralize most of the cyan colour cast:

colour restoration 02 b.jpg

Much better!

[photoken]

You know, this is waaaaay too addictive!

I fixed the blue colour in the top half of the spinnaker, reduced the amount of red in the rocks, and...well...

colour restoration 02 c.jpg

[cathodeRay]

We may need a new ICD 10 diagnosis: Photochromaphilia: an obsession with correcting correcting colours in photographs...

I've now installed and had a go with the Nik plugins/filters (for some reason - may be linked to what Brucet was saying elsewhere? I only get dfine, sharpener pro and viveza - the others don't show up as plugins, won't work as external programs (nothing happens) and when I try to run the relevant .exe I get 'not a win32 app' (I'm on 32bit XP SP3) despite the fact the PE headers show the .exe is a win32 app...) and it seems possible that viveza may be close to the 'dream' app/plugin I mentioned earlier. The key thing is the use of multiple control points, some of them grouped, eg one group for the sky, one for the trees, one for the rocks etc. On top of that, a control point can be added to anchor an area against change, eg on the hull. The extended range of sliders includes not just the exposure/tonality range of controls, but RGB and hue controls, and there is even a colour picker. Even better, in the control point list, there is an option to turn on/off visibility of all or any of the masks in play. The combination of all these things together may mean that viveza can be a one stop shop so to speak way of fixing this image. No leaning tower of Pisa layer stacks to manage. On the flip side using viveza is classic destructive editing, no tweaking after committing, only full undo. So the original file and/or layer needs to be read only, and all commits done to duplicates copies...

Here's a quick (5 mins max) example more to show the sort of possibilities than anything else, in the hope of encouraging others to have a go. What is particularly pleasing (at least to my eye) is the is the lack of mask boundary effects (viveza's masking is very gradient/transition orientated):

Viveza.jpg

cathodeRay

Edit note: corrected spelling of viveza...

[Eurgail]

I'm on 32bit XP SP3

The newer plugins (all that don't work) don't support windows xp officially since their first release and are also practically not working since the last few versions of the bundle (version 1.2x). :-/
Until version 1.1x all plugins but analog efex worked for me on windows xp. So perhaps you try to get a trial of version 1.111 and install it over the latest and maybe it works, then.

I used Viveza (and partially the other plugins, especially Color Efex) many years (actually since Google released it), but recently i found the PhotoLine built in tools more helpful and got finally more convenient results (for the things i took Viveza before, Color Efex is still nearly irreplaceable); but perhaps this is just related to a change in my habituation.