Removing a colour tint from part of a photo

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I recently came across just one old photo of my Amiga 600 (yes, I know - what can I say :becool: ? It was my pride and joy many years back and I no longer have it). Trouble is, the photo was taken with a normal film camera and light got in. Result? The left hand third of the colour print has a strong reddish tint to it with a sharp straight line boundary between the 'normal' part of the photo and the affected area. The objects in the affected area are still clearly visible - but they're coloured red.

Assuming it scans in ok at high res, any way I can remove the red tint and replace it with authentic-looking colour?
 

Mike A

New Member
If you've got access to Photoshop or some such, yes it's possible to do, but it's not easy. That's why us retouchers and imaging guru's can make a living :evil:
If the red side is just tints of red then you would probably have to desaturate it to grey and then 'hand colour' it. If it still has some original colour, but is just tinted towards red you might well be able to rescue some original colour from it. The greater difficulty is mating both sides of the image seamlessly. It can be done, but it's a professional job to get a good result.
 
OP
OP
beanzontoast
Thanks for the advice Mike. I have GIMP rather than Photoshop, but hopefully a similar process can be attempted using it.

As luck would have it, most of the affected objects - and certainly the computer, monitor and table - have at least part of their structure present in the unaffected part of the photo, so sampling the colours from there should be possible.
 

Mike A

New Member
GIMP should be fine. If the red side does have any original colour left in it, see if GIMP has an 'auto colour' or 'auto levels' command - that might get you started - but you'll have to mask these adjustments so that they affect the 'red' side only. Good luck - I hope you get it fixed!
 

kyuss

Veteran
Location
Edinburgh
I did a similar thing for a workmate a few years ago. If you struggle with it I wouldn't mind having a bash at fixing it if you wanted to email it to me.
 
OP
OP
beanzontoast
kyuss said:
I did a similar thing for a workmate a few years ago. If you struggle with it I wouldn't mind having a bash at fixing it if you wanted to email it to me.

Cheers for the offer :biggrin: - I think I've nailed it. Red-eye reduction (of all things) painted on using a brush got rid of 80% of it, then a combination of trial and error with other tools did the job. It's one of those things that you have to experiment with I guess.
 
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