click
to return to that page |
Colour
emulsion is comprised of three layers of silver halide mixed with
couplers and interlayers which filter specific light spectra. These
end up creating yellow, cyan, and magenta layers in the negative
after development. In effect film is a layer of gelatin on a plastic
base. Over time ambient conditions, moisture, varying temperatures,
residual chemical impurities etc. cause the 'gelatin' layer to deteriorate.
Although this negative has been kept in jacket since it was taken
around 20 years ago, you can see from the two enlarged clip areas
in the original scan on the left that the negative is showing signs
of deterioration. In Adobe Photoshop using the clone and healing
stamp tool, it required patient digital repair work at up to 10x
magnification to heal or clone from undamaged areas. I started in
one corner and worked section by section across the image. I have
also cropped the picture to improve the composition, this has also
removed the cup which was visually distracting. After that I applied
colour, saturation and contrast tweaks, the image was then sharpened
slightly and the background smoothed out. A high quality TIFF image
was then archived and put on an external hard drive, and a second
lo-res copy made for web use. Fortunately in this case there were
no scratches whatsoever on the negative; a full length scratch from
poor lab processing will double the restoration time. This image,
from scan to finish, took around two hours to resolve. However, it is
such contemplative and elevating work. |