Hi all,

I have old colour photos in yellowed color but without scratch. My PC is connected to a 4K display and running Ubuntu 22.04 desktop

Please advise;
1) How to remeve the yellowed color.
2) How to restore their original color
3) How to increase their sharpness

Thanks in advance

Regards

sample photo attached

I think you can skip out on restoring color. Although there are still some colors information, it'll be very hard for you to restore them.

Hi,

Thanks for your advice.

Before posting I have performed following tests:

A. On GIMP
1) Colors -> Curve
adjusting red/green/blue
2) Colors -> Hue-Saturation
Brightness-Contrast
3) Colors -> Curve
etc.

The yellowish color can be removed, some colors, such as grass, trees, etc can be restored. The photos are NOT very sharp after restoration.

B. AI Photo Editor online FREE
The result is worser than editing the photos on GIMP.

According to my recollection . I scanned the yellowish photos on Epson scanner and posted them on my website. Not all photos are so bad, only some of them.

I still have those yellowish photos and their negatives packed and stored on shelves. But it won't be easy for me to find them.

I have full knowledge scanning both photos and their negatives on mobile phone converting them to digital images. I have done them before. The mobile phone was nevigated via PC (Remote Desktop connection). I still have the fixture available.

But I have more than a thousand of photos and their negatives. It would take a long time to finish. Particularly the negatives, there is no marking on them indicating where they were captured.

Those photos were captured in the past when I travelled worldwide.

Suggestion would be appreciated.

Regards

A quick try at the sample image using the plug-in - col-cast-reduction.py - resulted in this image.



Applying a contrast mask to the result produced the following image, still not very good, but perhaps a starting point for further enhancement.

upload photo was restored by me before starting my posting but no sharp

Hi,

Continued

Upload photo was captured at about the same in London. You can see the restored result made by me. Although the restored photo is not sharp enough but its quality is acceptable. It is a colour photo

Regards

satimis, I'm not an expert but I did my try.

Hi Issabella.

Well done.

Could you please advise the steps performed ? Thanks

Regards

Better. Can the photo be sharper?

Regards

Doubt it very much. A lot of the definition in the foreground seems to be gone.

I started since your well done outcome. So I started from your image. Then I tried to remove the blur, Filters - Enhance - Sharpen Unsharp Mask.
After that Colors - Exposure and added much Black Level. Finally Colors - Hue-Saturation and added Saturation.
You did a nice job

Thanks for your steps

On Export the photo what level should I select? The default is [9]

Thanks

Colors - Exposure
I don't remeber exactly I applied but about 30
And satutation, so the colours get a better look.

You could apply Advanced Tone Mapping after that. The background is better.
Filters - Enhance _ Advanced Tone Mapping

Thanks

Sorry.

Filters -> Enhance -> no "Advanced Tone Mapping" here

I hope you can get it. It is a Script. Set it in Script Folder
After that start Gimp

I think it is here;

Advanced Tone Mapping
http://zarniwhoop.uk/advancedtonemapping.html

Get it here: advancedtonemapping-2.10.scm.

I have this file "advancedtonemapping-2.10.scm" download on Ubuntu 22.04. Where shall I store this file so that it would popup on;
Filters -> Enhance -> Advanced Tone Mapping

Thanks

Yes, that is the one. I sent it in zip above in my previous post