Photo Scan Help

too much red in the pics!

[Jill]

I am scanning in photos for a new site. The pics themselves look fine but when I scan them in (using a flatbed scanner) they are too dark and a bit too red. These are prints I'm scanning in now, not from a digital. I've tried several things but can't seem to get the light right. Anyone have any tips and techniques? If you'd like to see a sample of the pics sticky me and I'll show what I have.

[Staffa]

The most basic would be to open the pics in a graphics editor and change the hue and saturation and the light and contrast.
Depending on the sophistication of your editor you could even do a lot more.
If you get stuck let me know :)

[holo_girl]

Do you have Photoshop or another image editing program? In PS you could adjust the color levels, color balance, hue/saturation, curves, and probably more for the redness. For the darkness, there's the brightness/contrast settings and levels, too. I don't work with any other programs for pics, but all probably have something similar to work with.
If you don't have any software to use, you should be able to control the color and brightness somewhat with the scanner settings alone...?

[mivox]

Look at your scanner controls... a lot of scanner software allows you to adjust the image quality before you scan to a certain extent. Brighten it up a bit with the scanner software, and then open it up and adjust the color with a photo editor...

In photoshop, I'd use the "Hue/Saturation" controls under the image>adujst... option in the top menus, and turn down the saturation of the red & magenta.

What software are you using?

[korkus2000]

If you are using photo deluxe you can also use the hue/saturation tool by clicking "Get & Fix Photo". Then click on "adjust quality". A drop down will give you the option of "hue & saturation". Use the hue to get the red out and the lightness to brighten up the photos.

[Jill]

I use Photoshop 7.0 and I have been fooling with the curves/levels, hue/saturation, etc. I realize I will probably not get a dupe of the picture I have but I'd like to get close as these are of swimwear and the models have to look great! These photos were taken outdoors so the lighting and color a bit hard to pin down on the scans. Lots of shadows and bright lights to deal with.

I've messed around a bit with the scanner and it's a pretty decent one but the results are still somewhat darker and redder than I'd like. I guess I'm heading in the right direction. Thanks for all of the input! I could use more if you've got it!

[mivox]

If you're having problems with shadows messing up your levels, don't forget to give your dodge tool a try... or select the problem shadows (or other specific problem areas) precisely with the polygonal lasso tool, so you can adjust their colors/brightness separately from the rest of the image.

[korkus2000]

You may also want to try masking the areas out so you can only deal with the areas necessary. Dodge tool does work wonders. You also might want to try some adjustment layers.

[Jill]

I've made a copy of the orginal image and changed the layer mode to screen which lightens it up a lot. So much so I have to reduce the opacity of the layer a little. It's going to take some work to get them back to looking close the orginal prints.

I am scanning them in at 300 pixels, should I go higher? Lower? Obviously I have to lower that number before saving to the web but I was under the impression that a high quality scan would give a better result down the line.

[mivox]

I usually start at 600-800ppi... but if the image is going to need a lot of work, I might go as high as 1200.

I never thought of using an entire screened layer of an image for lightening... interesting!

If you set your eraser to 30% opacity or so, you could selectively erase areas of your screening layer to create different intensity corrections for different areas of the underlying image...