As I am scanning a lot of old slides many have colour casts that I am finding hard to fix in Aperture. I am mainly using Levels for this and sometimes that works quite well and at times working with white balance, exposure and enhance (with tints) also helps. But this is very slow and I have a lot of slides. I have found that round tripping to PE6 and using the Colour Correction under Enhance almost always fixes the problem easily. I don't want to use PE6 all the time - surely there is a quicker way in Aperture?
Thanks David for fixing and showing the adjustments you used. I have made a preset of the Blue channel which will work with some scanned images, but of course there is a lot of variation with film type. I will still use PSE6 with some of the more difficult colour problems as working on them in Aperture takes too long when scanning so many slides.
Ruth Lathlean
Indeed, working with older slides, negatives and prints can cause some tedious workflow snags … quite often each image will present quite different problems … even with whiz-bang “automatic” corrections forcing us to invest some ground level TLC to get reasonable results.
If the items that needed to be scanned were consistent in color, even though they were off a bit, you could use a preset in the color controls of the scanning software … unfortunately, in my experience, it’s a very nimble moving target.
There are tons of ways to skin a cat and AP and PS6 have their fair share. Everyone has a different workflow and its all good, I will share mine and maybe this will help.
I use both programs but always AP first for the bulk basic moves and filing. Ap’s white balance is at the top and thats where I start, work top to bottom. I generally use the WB (should be called Grey Bal) eye dopper to locate a grey and then the mag green slider to fine tune it. Some of that move is subjective esp around sunset shots. I use the eye dropper one the grey to see the RGB values under the histogram to verify equal amounts of RGB (128 128 128 or 249 249 249 or 25 25 25) Thing that are grey are fun to find ( tires, white shirts, text on signs) . With the new Skin balance in newer AP you can just locate skin. See Josephs video on Skin white balance and Auto Enhance magic button.
I seldom color correct in PS6 but fine tuning is alway needed due to me and environment and not AP.
Use WB in AP first and look at levels to fine tune it if you wish. Im a curves Guy so I use that. Tints I never use unless Im going for some Instagram look but I suppose it would work if it wasn’t done right in WB.
Old slides or photos are very hard because they have lost information in some of the RGB channels. Try Auto enhance first and then fine tun in ap. I would be happy to look at an image if you like, email to davidbmoore@mac.com
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
White Balance and Auto Enhance Magic button usually do nothing for many of these old slides with colour casts. I took Joseph’s advice in one of his videos to go straight to Levels or Curves if the colour was really badly wrong. I can get changes of course with Levels or Curves but a lot of fine tuning is needed too. With thousands of slides I want a quicker way to fix colour but it appears that Aperture doesn’t have one. I still find that PSE6 has a one stop colour correction button under Enhance which does a pretty good job quickly.
Thanks DBmoore for your email. I’ll send you jpegs of the original and one fixed with a click in PSE6. Maybe you can find a quick way in Aperture to fix the colour of the original? Thanks.
Ruth Lathlean
Thanks for sending the image. Well as you know old film is a can of worms. Different films or color prints change differently over time. This image has a bad blue channel. I dont have E6 just ps6 (snob alert) so I couldn’t try the enhance button in E6 to compare. Using WB I was able to get close to the right color as you would expect, however the easiest was Levels in Ap. Just adjusting the blue channel, since it was the worst, moving its end point and its mid point toward the right did 90% of the work. Ill send you what I did, I added some shadow and 700 kelvin of WB. So If all your images look like that you could make a preset of the Levels adjustment of the blue channel. This effect could be applied before importing or after. Might get you in the ball park faster. There is no true quick fix for different old films.
One thought is to leave them as is and say they are Instagrams!!! :0 Did I say that?
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ