Removing Color Casts in Old Photos Using an iPhone
Old printed photos sometimes acquire a color cast —an unwanted, unnatural color tinge affecting the entire picture. The tint may be pink, orange, blue or another color. It could be due to a wrong camera setting (e.g. white balance), improper development (imbalanced chemical mix or timing), fading of the dyes over time (especially on exposure to direct light) or other causes.
Here’s a simple trick to neutralize or reduce color casts. Note that this hack is meant for beginners, not advanced users.
We’ll use an iPhone to first scan the photo and then restore its colors with a bit of editing. You could use any scanner app for scanning and either Photos or any other photo editor for editing, but we will go with Pic Scanner Gold app because it scans photos and also has the editing tools we need.
If you have an Android or Windows phone, you may use any other scanner and photo editor app — and apply the same methodology.
Step 1: Scan the Photo
Whichever photo scanner app you use, make sure you scan in natural, indirect daylight — not under electric light, and not using flash.
Step 2: Check White Balance
Find an area or object in the scan that should be white, e.g. a wall or a piece of clothing. If it’s the wrong shade, use the White Balance tool and adjust until the area looks white. Don’t overdo it, a bit of under-correcting is OK.
Step 3: Tackle the Color Cast
The color of the color cast may be obvious or a bit confusing — is is pink, red, yellow, blue or green? Focus on an area that you know looks wrong, e.g. skin or sky or another object to decide which unwanted tinge needs toning down or neutralizing. Look for its opposite color in this color wheel:
The opposite color is what you’ll need to boost slightly, in order to counteract the color cast. For an orange cast, you want to boost blue. Use the Tint tool, pulling the slider very slightly to the left. Or the Warmth tool — reducing warmth will boost the blue. You could also use the Temperature tool. Use only one of these, not all! And use in moderation.
Step 4: Adjust Saturation
Use the Saturation tool to reduce color intensity until the skin tones and other things in the photo look natural. If necessary, adjust brightness/contrast.
As the final step in editing, use the Sharpen tool to apply a very slight amount of sharpening. Hopefully, you now have a much-improved scan. If not, you can always discard the changes made so far and start again. With a bit of trial and error, you’ll be able to achieve good results.
This is a just quick way to restore color to old photos, using readily available editing tools on your phone, so the results aren’t perfect. Advanced users will obviously prefer using more sophisticated (and expensive) editing software.
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Want to know exactly what the photo editing tools in your phone apps do? See this 5-minute guide: https://medium.com/me/stats/post/b7aeb32cd988
