Colour correction in PS7

Yes Canadians use a u in colour...

I am currently processing a bunch of old slides into digital.

After scanning they always come out quite dark. So what i have been doing is playing with curves, then maybe a little contrast and finally i use the saturation tool. Most of the time this works alright but from time to time it doesn't especially with white highlights.

I am just trying to get back to the original exposures of the actual slide itself. Most of the auto functions give me some weird results.

Anyone have any other hints that may help?

Thanks

If it were me, I would seriously consider re-scanning, as it will be more difficult to recover a bad scan than to get more information in the scan itself.

I expect you will lose a lot of detail if you try and correct the dark scans.

What has worked for me is to use only one slide, scan it at high dpi, but small size so it's manageable. Do some test adjustments and find out what scan parameters work for you. Your scanner and monitor settings are critical if you want true colors. You should be able to adjust your scanner to get brighter images as they scan. Once you find that match, record the settings. Luckily, this will only cost you time.

Joe

You might consider converting to LAB colour space and playing around with the curves in LAB. LAB isolates all the lightness and darkness information in the L or Luminosity channel, putting color information in the a and b channels. That makes it easier to adjust contrast or correct scans that are too dark by using moves in the L channel, without changing colour values.

The a and b channels are very poweful if the image needs color correction to get it closer to the original slide. Steeping the a and b curves will enhance saturation and restore some of the color contrast lost in the scanning process. Using a Nikon LS2000 scanner, I find almost every scanned image needs at least some correction in LAB.

You mention problems in highlight areas, which suggests that curves is probably the right tool. You can move up the quarter- and mid-tone sections of the L curve to lighten the overall tone of the image while keeping the lightest areas close to their original values.

oops

Thanks for the info guys

I'll give the LAB a shot.

Its not so much i am getting bad scans, as far as i know all scans come out somewhat dark when done in raw mode, its more that i don't really know the best way of retrieving the optimal colours after.

I'm a photographer not a techie.....sad is the fact that now i have to become both. Too much time on computer these days and not enough in the water

I don't like to pre set anything on the scanner itself during prescan as that makes the photo lose information. Better to scan raw so all the info is still there and do it post in PS, no? correct me if i'm wrong

Can you post one of your unaltered images? I would like to see how dark it is before giving any suggestions.