When I stumbled across last week’s 2002 Hawaiian palm tree photo to edit, I also found these gems of my kids when they were little. My kids were my models back then. They actual got so used to the camera, I think they thought it was attached to my face. So they just did their thing and I snapped away. They were in this spinning tube and clearly, I was not paying attention to my settings. I was just shooting away in effort to capture their precious expressions. After looking at the pictures though, I was very disappointed at the quality. But now, I am able to “recover” these pictures with a little Photoshop magic. I may even get it printed now:)
To bring the blah before photo to a more acceptable print. I did the following steps in Photoshop CS5:
- Applied the auto tone as I wasn’t really sure how to counteract the green hue from the tube.
- Raised the curves.
- Then, while in the selective color tool, I adjusted these:
- Under the neutral, I adjusted cyan -27, magenta -2, yellow -9 and the black -3.
- Under the red, I adjusted cyan -24, magenta -20, yellow +37, and the black +2.
- Under the green, I adjusted cyan +51, magenta +13, yellow +17 and black +13.
- ( I would like to say that I had some reason as to why I picked these numbers, but I really didn’t. I was just pushing the slide bars around until I got colors I liked. And in hopes of seeing some pattern, I wrote them down. And yet, no mysteries were really revealed, lol. Maybe it takes a lot more practice at changing colors to figure out the mathematical color ratios.)
After that, I liked what I had basically and just did some minor adjustments for a little more impact.
- Boosted the brightness by 13.
- Raised the contrast by 26.
Once I was done, I went ahead and applied the same steps to the other photos that were taken in the tube. Now, I can put them in a photo album 🙂
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Michelle Lunato Photography 
Oh, an amazing job! Don’t worry, my editing process is even more clueless than yours, I just push and click and delete and repeat. 🙂 I hope your kids enjoyed seeing these, the joy and happiness radiates from the photos.
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I figure it’s the way to learn-keep clinking and moving forward or back until you like it! I know-those faces are so cute. I miss those little kids. Time flies so fast!
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How wonderful to be able to rescue these “old” photos, I’ll bet they brought back many happy memories whilst you were doing them. Really fun pictures, nicely edited. 🙂
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Thank you. It was fun to see these little faces:)
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They look so happy and are definitely having fun! So glad that you figured out how to restore your old photos with PS magic, great edits. 🙂
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Thanks-now, if I could only restore them to those adorable ages.
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What an improvement. I love the blown out effect, it really gives an impression of what the day was like. And the expressions on those kids’ faces are priceless. I’m sure you’re glad to have these photos now. I would definitely print them up! 🙂
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Thanks! When I see pics of them like this, I wish they were little again. Then I think, I like my free time now too!
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Michelle, what wonderful gems you have in these photos! And I love your honesty in saying you just moved the selective color sliders until you got something you liked — I do that too (which oftentimes makes it a challenge in writing up ABF posts – trying to explain the reasons behind choices 😉). Nicely done. Have your kids seen these yet??
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Thank you Stacy. I am glad you like my honesty. I was sitting there and thought, um, I have no foggy clue why I picked these numbers so I better let them know. I would have hated someone to ask why I did magenta -43 while raising cyan by 87….I’d have nothing, lol. No, the kids haven’t seen them. I totally need to post this on their Facebook accounts! Thanks for the idea:)
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LOL – go for it, Michelle 🙂
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If you ever need to get rid of a colour cast like what you found in the tube; open curves and select the color channel that corresponds to your cast, eg green select red (red and green are opposites), use the selective pointer and click on the colour and drag up or down (in this case down) and it should start to balance out the cast, if it effects areas you don’t want you can just mask it out.
Everything you did to the picture worked really well, a great rescue job.
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What!? This sounds way easier than my random convoluted efforts! Lol, I will learn easier ways with all this help! Thanks:)
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it takes a bit of practice and trial and error but it does work. 😉
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I have homework to try then. And I’m sure I’ll have some photos that could use the work, both new and old.
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Those are so fun! Awesome that you can save these photos and love them all over again.
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Thank you. I know, they are now 17 and 20 so they sweet little kid days are fun to remember!
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