Childhood photo revival

[meetdilip]

I have an old days colour photo with some sepia / brown tint. I used Filter > Enhance > Despeckle to get rid of noise.

Is it possible to remove the brownish / sepia tint as well ? To make the photo look fresh. Thanks.

[Ofnuts]

(04-29-2020, 09:27 AM)meetdilip Wrote: I have an old days colour photo with some sepia / brown tint. I used Filter > Enhance > Despeckle to get rid of noise.

Is it possible to remove the brownish / sepia tint as well ? To make the photo look fresh. Thanks.

If it was a B&W picture, then Color>Desaturate, and increase contrast, with Brightness-Contrast, or for better results, with Curves.

If it was a color picture, perhaps some white balance tool that you calibrate with something that should be white or grey on the image (shirt, fridge, paper...)

[meetdilip]

I tried Despeckle, Colour temperature and Exposure tools. Exposure was most effective in making the photo look new. Colour temperature removed the sepia tone to some extent. Despeckle did a lot of help by removing the noise.

Looks like it can't be any better. I am slowly getting familiar with the tools

[denzjos]

I've used this before on gimp :

Gimp menu : Colours / Levels 


1/ Auto Input Levels
2/ if the result is not satisfied, play with the sliders on the input / output levels (red / green / blue)
3/ or 'Edit these Settings as Curves' (as Ofnuts mentioned)


   

[meetdilip]

(04-29-2020, 02:34 PM)denzjos Wrote: I've used this before on gimp :

Gimp menu : Colours / Levels 


1/ Auto Input Levels
2/ if the result is not satisfied, play with the sliders on the input / output levels (red / green / blue)
3/ or 'Edit these Settings as Curves' (as Ofnuts mentioned)

This is an awesome reply. One click and you are through. Thanks.

[jimindt]

Saw this when I was looking for the same thing
http://advicy.co/questions/20263/how-to-...ld-drawing

[rich2005]

While I avoid  anything social-media-ish I will look at the gimp section of reddit, if only to smile.  This one, the usual why-is-gimp-not-like-ps type of post *. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/g...otos_with/

The correction procedure goes back a long way, there is even a script for it somewhere.

Starting with (1) sometimes it is enough to colour pick part of the background or...
Duplicate the layer and give a big gaussian blur. (2)  (the slider does increase past the dialogue / enter value manually) 

   

Colour Invert that layer (3)  and change the layer mode (4)

   

Then up to you for final tweaking. Make a New-from-visible  (5)  then Colour curves or Adjust Colour Levels (6) - this setting the white point.

   

*Because Gimp is not PS.

[meetdilip]

My photo is not very old. There is a tint of brown, yes. But it is not strong enough to be picked by a colour picker.

But above one looks like a new plan of action. I had to use " Despeckle " a couple of times as there were many grains in the photo. And " Auto Level " almost fixed it instantly as if it were a filter. Possibly because of the nature of the photo I have.

[denzjos]

Rich, nice !  I didn't know this workflow.