Colour fade

[Rob1955]

I want to restore a photo, but have a slight problem with part of the photo. I don't know if it's just fade, or damaged, but it's a different colour. I've tried changing it to grey scale to try and match up the colours, but can't seem to get it to match. Part of it looks sepia. Any advice appreciated.

[sallyanne]

You could select the area and then using levels, curves or exposure make it darker; but you would have to blend the two areas together after as you will have a sharp line where your selection was. Even if you feather your selection you will still have a line.

If you have GMIC you could also try dehaze, not too strong as it will darken your photo.

[dinasset]

(06-07-2022, 12:21 PM)Rob1955 Wrote: I want to restore a photo, but have a slight problem with part of the photo. I don't know if it's just fade, or damaged, but it's a different colour. I've tried changing it to grey scale to try and match up the colours, but can't seem to get it to match. Part of it looks sepia. Any advice appreciated.

My modest try.

[Rob1955]

Thanks for both your replies. I will try dehaze Sallyanne. I don't mind experimenting until I get it right. Dinasset, how did you achieve this?

[sallyanne]

I didn't fix your photo up for you you can do that. 

If you want to keep the sepia you may have to desaturate the photo first and colorize it after.

I burned the lighter area until it was a similar colour to the rest.

[attachment=8063]

[rich2005]

Just a few thoughts as a starter.

Jpegs are 8 bit so I think I would up the precision to 16 bit Image -> Precision.

Maybe fix the tears and scratches before anything else.

I quite like the old faded tint, but a Colors -> Auto -> White Balance changes that.

Using duplicate layers with layer masks to separate the areas,

Two sample points, one vertically above the other, in a similar section. see: https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-sampl...ialog.html The sample point dock is in Windows -> Dockable Dialogues. Detached here for ease of use.

   

Then using the curves tool and each color curve in turn (Red / Blue / Green) try and match the value in one point with the value in the other point. You might get a reasonable match.

   

Come back to it after something else. A little post cloning and a sharpen

   

[denzjos]

This is what I did :
Colours / Desaturate / Desaturate
Made a selection from the upper-left corner that need correction
Copied the selection to a new layer
Set the new layer mode to 'Multiply'
Set layer opacity to 39%
Make new layer from visible
If sepia needed : colour / colourise (use a brown color and use the sliders to correct)  
Need some correction on the crack with the healing and clone tool