We recently got a scanner that has allowed me to post all our old family pictures on the internet. The scanner works wonderfully. The only problem comes with old slides and negatives. These need to be either darkened or lightened.
I know how to get to the editing feature of JPEG images. Once there I can reverse the colors (for negatives), enlarge, shrink and crop the image. But I can’t seem to lighten/darken it. I can also change the image to another type of image. But still I can’t figure out how to lighten/darken it. Does anyone know how?
If you use PhotoShop (or Gimp), there are various ways of doing this. You can change the level, adjust brightness/contrast, or hue/saturation/lightness. There are probably others, but these methods are the ones I use mose often.
Jpegs are lossy images. That means if you open it in a graphics program, edit it, and save it again, the quality deteriorates. The classic deterioration is pixelation.
Take your original jpg and make it read-only. You will never attempt to modify this image.
Open your original jpg in a quality graphics program and save it in that program’s native format.
Now adjust the brightness/contrast. The image will not deteriorate.
I recommend trying the simply fantastic Freeware program “Irfanview”, and using “gamma correction”. I do a lot of scan/photo manipulation, and am surprised at how well Irfanview’s gamma correct can lighten up a dark image. Brightness adjustment might not do it well enough for you.
You want to start the correction before you actually have an image. Your scanner software is the place to start - not your editing software.
Not knowing what kind of scanner you’ve got, I can’t tell where to look in the menus. You’ll have to find the “brightness,” “contrast,” and “gamma” controls. You might also find an “automatic” setting that will cause the scanner driver to automatically adjust the gamma, contrast, and brightness to optimum values for the area you select in the preview.
To scan:
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Make a preview.
Select the actual photo using the select box in the preview window.
If you have the “automatic” option set, you should see the image change appearance when you select it.
Adjust the contrast so that the darkest place in the photo actually looks black.
Adjust the brightness so that the brightest spot is white.
You might find a coupl of little “pipettes” at the edge of the preview window. Use the black one to select the darkest spot in the photo and the white one to select the brightest spot in the photo. Do this instead of using the contrast and brightness controls.
Use the gamma control to adjust the middle tones of the picture so that you have the clearest picture - neither too dark nor too light.
Make your scan.
Check the completed scan in your editor. If you don’t like the way it looks, adjust the scanner settings and try again.
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Editing the photo after you scan it will cause you to lose details since you are working with a limited precision. Changing the settings in the scanner software changes the way the scanner picks up the images, and you will usually gain detail that way.
Put simply, if you use your editor to darken an image that was scanned to bright, you won’t see a lot of detail. If you do the correction in the scanner software, the image will have been scanned darker and will have more detail.
I should also add that if you have really bad scanner software, it may do the correction in software after the scan rather than doing it in the scan mechanism. In this case, it really doesn’t matter if you change the brightness in your editor or in the scanner software. You can tell the difference if you editor has a “histogram” function. Scan a picture (with correction) and open it in your editor, then call up the histogram. If the histogram has veritical skips in it, then the scanner is correcting in the driver software - you should scan without correction and correct it in your editor since editors usually do a better job. If the histogram is solid, then the scanner is correcting in hardware - so you should always correct in the scanner software rather than in your editor.
I’d better shut up now, else I’ll start rambling on about monitor gamma and calibration targets, and you’ll never get around to scanning those photos of your grandmother’s tenth birthday party
I just downloaded one of the photos from your site. The old b/w photos seem to need some serious correction, and judging by way they look, they’re probably not to whippy in real life. Your scanner might be doing an accurate job of recording the photo as is, but old photos tend to change over the years.
I’ve scanned bunches of old photos for my mother in law. Most of these were made with poor equipment by people without much experience in making photos. The photos were mostly improperly exposed - too dark or too light, just any old way. Because of this, they are low on detail to begin with. Aging tends to cause them to lighten and discolor - losing more detail.
I usually scan the pictures as I described above, and then save one copy in original. I make a second copy and convert it from rgb to grayscale - this gets rid of the discoloration without losing detail. I keep the original in case I want to make an edited copy later - I still have the next-best-to-the-real-thing-image even if the real photo is gone.
OK, I’ve looked at some more of the photos, including some more modern color ones. It look like your scanner is attempting to correct the photos, but just not getting it quite right. They all seem to be a little overexposed. Also, you should try to not scan the border of the photo. The automatic function decides that the wihte border is the brightest part of the picture and corrects to include this in the picture - which squeezes the brighter parts of the photos down into the midtones. All of this causes you to lose visible detail.
Summary:
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Scan as descibed above.
Don’t scan the borders of the photos.
Use the automatic settings as a starting point and tune them for better results.
If your preview has a histogram, use it to show you how well you’ve done your settings.
A proper histogram (if you are correcting an old photo) fills nearly the entire width of the histogram window and has rounded shoulders at the left and right edges.
If the histogram edges go clear out to the edge of the window, you probably have photo detail being lost.
If the histogram curve is bunched up in the middle, you are losing detail.
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