PJ Staley

I recently began a restoration project for photos dating in the 1800's. I scanned it into Photoshop (7.0) at 300 dpi. I went over the photo inch by inch correcting each scratch, discoloration, etc. but when I printed it (after many hours of hard work), the new looked worse than the old even though on my computer monitor, the corrected one looks gorgeous. The colors (sepias) were dull, flat and ugly when printed, even though the print out of the original looked pretty good. I checked the printer settings to glossy photo paper, etc, but that's not the problem. Clearly something happened between the scan and my final product. (EBKAC=error between keyboard and chair). I would appreciate a recommendation for a good book or tutorial on the particular subject.

Erik

Did you calibrate your monitor?
Did you properly install your scanner's profile?
What kind of printer are you using?
What is the RGB colour space you use?
etc...

Depending on your printer, you should have a profile, or, in case of HP, you have to set to sRGB and let the printer soft do the job.

Yet: printing always happens in CMYK mode whilst what you see and work with is usually RGB (few people use LAB).
So, if you use a HP printer without profile, you should choose sRGB as custom proof setup and save it. Then, by pressing Ctrl/Cmd+Y you can switch between your AdobeRGB beautiful pic and the meagre sRGB (or CMYK) result.
Keep in mind that no monitor ever can display CMYK!!! It can only act as if and display some crude approximation.

There are many good tuts on colour calibration, and afaik, you can find many in the links forum here at TG.

In my opinion, Inside Photoshop by Gary Bouton is a very good, thorough and practical book.

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wbiss

Welcome PJ Staley!

All great advice from Erik!

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Welcome aboard PJ Staley [righton]
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www.scarboroughwebdesign.co.uk

Welcome to the board PJ Staley [righton]

Nice to have you here!

Rantin Al

Hullo PJ, welcome to the fun house.

Are the originals being scanned and worked on in 'colour'? i.e. scanned sepia tone?

I find it easier to work entirely in greyscale for the restoration and then re-tint to add the sepia tone as the last step.

Scan initially in colour. 300 dpi should be OK if the original is not being scaled.
If the image is on the small side and you want to enlarge it at print time, scan at higher resolution (600+ or more) to avoid re-sampling.
Convert to greyscale using the Channel Mixer to extract maximum scan detail.
Restore & repair.
Convert to RGB (for standard desk top printer) and add a sepia tone using a Hue & Saturation Colorize layer.
Print on best quality paper.

This is my basic workflow for old images and have had some great results.

Could you post a couple of small screen snapshots of your original and repair? Just a small detail section to get an idea.

Hope this helps, cheers Al

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