Thursday, August 2, 2007

More Retreads

The house is still in total disarray, and I'm re-posting a photo related post from last year on my other blog.

When I was a kid, and we went on trips, in gift shops you could see racks of 35mm slides hanging there. If the weather wasn't great, or you didn't have a camera, no problem, just buy some of the place's professionally done slides for your collection.

My Mother gave me all of the family's slides, and some of them were what I call "bought slides."

I absolutely love the things. They have a very strong 1960s / 1970s vibe that appeals to me. I remember standing in gift shops and holding strips of slides up to the light to see.

The one's my parents bought have almost all shifted colors quite dramatically. The scanning process for slides is slow, but the color correction is actually pretty quick as I talked of yesterday.

Without further ado:

Here are a couple of before and after of what can be done with color shifted slides.

These first two are of the same slide of the Citrus Tower in Clermont, Florida. This is an old slide of my parent's from 1970.

Before: Color shifted red.

After: Color corrected as best I could. Looks good to me. A pro could do better, but I'm pleased.

Before: Train ride at Silver Dollar City, Branson, MO, 1974. Also color shifted red, but not as bad as the one above.

After: Lookin' really good.

This final one is just an after. I didn't keep a before scan of this one. I'm including this one because it's original slide that my Father In Law took around 1961 was just faded. Slowly losing all color, not color shifted like the two above. It isn't faded too badly, so with Photoshop Elements 4, I was able to make it look as if it was taken yesterday.

That's Lovely Wife on the far right, the little girl being held by her mother.

This is fun.

9 comments:

photowannabe said...

Love your retreads. I must learn photoshop. My folks had many slides that need help.

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

Oh it sure is ...u have done exceedingly great job on the second one...and third must be such a beautiful gift to your wife.....great work and hope all that chaos in your house gets taken care of soon .

Ben Nakagawa said...

That is a wonderful thing to do! Rescue them and you will be hero.
Well seriously, Those old photos are full of memory and valuable for family in may way, your effort is equally valuable for your family as well as fun part you are enjoying.

bluemountainmama said...

how did you do this? did you scan them into your computer and then photoshop?

we used to go to silver dollar city every summer, as a "working vacation" during their old-time music week. my parents' band played and us kids got to have all the fun all day! :) i loved it!

JAM said...

moi and ben, thanks, it's fun doing this, because fixing the color shift is really quite easy.

photowannabe and bluemountainmama - I started a comment that got so long to respond to you both, that I'm going to turn it into tomorrows post, OK?

Anonymous said...

Wow you have done a great job of rescuing these pictures. They look great. I have seen that train soooooo many times. Bet you couldn't guess my favorite ride at SDC?

Anna said...

I like these....I so enjoy playing around with images. All I need is more time in the day...dont we all?!?!?

lv2scpbk said...

Nice job with the photos. Do you ever notice how most women will bend their one knee while taking a photo. Looks like all the women are doing that in the last photo. I think I do it too without really thinking about it.

kmm said...

This is a great way to bring back to life old photos. Well done Cheers Kerrin