I have to convert around 200 pictures from negatives. Some of them are very precious, with my brother who was on the Indian Army and was killed fighting terrorists in 2000.

I have bought a negative scanner but the images are very yellow. I have tried the colour average method but does not seem to get it done. Any other way and is there a way to automate the process so I don't have to do it 200 times?

Original File



With the Average Layer method

I must mention that I am an absolute newbie at using GIMP. So far, all I have done is crop and rotate images. Would be grateful for any help

maybe try some kind of tone mapping? I don't know how, but I am sure there are tutorials on the inter webs.

Welcome Sonam,

Here is a topic about "color cast":

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14147
In this topic I forgot to mention the G'MIC>Colors>Mixer [...] filters, they are very useful too.

I recommend to instal G'MIC.

With 200 images, I would prefer to do process them one by one. You said the pictures were precious, so I would give them a special treatment. If you use G'MIC in GIMP, the sliders will stay in their position (in that session), so you can repeat those settings for other images.

The next example is not perfect (upper image is last edited, more red). But a nice begin. With repairing a strong color cast, you will always lose some colors. Here is a strong yellow color cast. When repairing, you will lose some of the original yellow in the image.
Here I used G'MIC>Colors>Specific saturation
G'MIC curves
GIMP color balance:

Welcome Sonam, iarga did a very nice treatment on your image. I only applied the new filter Crazy Tone Map on her result.

Don't forget Sonam that iarga gave you a nice tip, when you apply any action in Gimp, the programme keeps the last filter/script used for your next photos to mend. It is under Filters at the first upper option.

Thank you for your advice, I am going to spend today working with these options to find out what works best and then start to do the 200 images.

Iarga, you did an excellent enhancement.
Thanks Issabella for "adding" to that one the effect of my CrazyTonMap.
I agree with Iarga, if those photos are important for you, Sonam, each one deserves a "personal" treatment, maybe similar to others but not always exactly the same. Good luck

As Issabella, I started from Iarga's outcome(2) and played a bit.
Just to see another look...

Negatives are very orange. When the colours are inverted the resultant image lacks orange.

Does your scanner have software that came with it? Does this software have a feature to correct colours (especially the orange)? This would probably be the easiest way to go.

The most important thing is to know how to work with colors:

Here,
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14147&start=10#p193728 ,
I point to the excellent tutorials by Pat David.

You can use this in every photo editing software. In RawTherapee, you can save a profile after editing an image. Then you can use that profile on other images.

If you have a specific question about the process (in GIMP-G'MIC), please ask. Then I will try to give a step-by-step explanation.

Without going into the rights and wrongs of applying the same correction to many images.

Back to the original question,



Using Gimp the plugins gmic and BIMP
http://www.gmic.eu and http://www.alessandrofrancesconi.it/projects/bimp/

Find a suitable gmic filter and determine the settings. This one is short, and can be copied from the layer name, others might need the gmic logfile if they are long.



In this case I get:



In BIMP, enter that as 'other Gimp procedure' with values '1' and the above string. Add the folder of files and an output folder.



best of luck.

edit: A different gmic filter similar result to tweaking the color curves: boost-fade with default setting works ok with the sample image

New outcome, obtained using Gimp functions/filters.

There are some setting in software that is based on the film type used. If you've not found those check the scanning software settings to see if they are available. This can make a significant difference on the initial scan.
You will still have to do some adjustments to compensate for the age of the negatives.

Thanks iarga, I am trying to install G'MIC and getting the hang of the tool. I think am getting somewhere and seeing results close to what I want

Also trying out the DSLR + Lighbox to scan the -ves in case the issue is with the negative scanner.

Hello,

If your scanner doesn't give you result properly then you have to upgrade in the new version or you can reinstall the whole software...yet if it is not working properly then you have to take help of professional service provider.
Thanks...

Oh forgot to mention
That was just using hue/saturation on the yellow
Contrast to embolden what was there then I enhanced the colour to brighten the green.

Hey,

I have a query about negative scanning, Which side do you scan negatives? could you guys please suggest me something good for this query?????

Thank you in advance.