Scanning old Sepia prints

[Roy C]

I have a lot of old family prints to scan and clean-up including some sepia tones.
I tried scanning in both 24bit and 48 bit colour mods but quality was not great, especially in certain shadowed areas where there were ugly/strange highlights.
I have since tried scanning in Greyscale mode and then applying a Sepia tint in Photoshop which seems to work better - is this the best way to to do it?have you any tips for getting the best out of the scans.

 

[photoimaging]

Depends on your scanner......but don't scan in greyscale.

Joan

 

[Roy C]

Depends on your scanner......but don't scan in greyscale.

Joan

Why not? I seem to be getting better results by scanning in greyscale and then adding a sepia tone in Photoshop. When scanning some of the old sepia prints in colour mode I am getting a horrible metallic type cast in some of the shadowed areas, something to do with the emulsions used on the print I guess.

 

[photoimaging]

If you are happy with the results that's OK but I always scan in colour and then convert to B&W, tweak levels etc. and then add a sepia tone (once you get a sepia tone that you like you could write an action for it, saves faffing)...... just my personal preferences.

 

[snappingsam]

You might find that scanning in colour - then use one of the channels - perhaps the green - will give a better result - it's like photographing on B&W but using filters....

If you have a stain you want to remove you shoot using that colour of filter - and if you want to make it show you use the complimentary colour....

So sepia prints are yellowish and redish - so a complimentary colour to enhance would be blue or green....

You could also use channel mixer to get a blend of more than one channel.

 

[Roy C]

You might find that scanning in colour - then use one of the channels - perhaps the green - will give a better result - it's like photographing on B&W but using filters....

If you have a stain you want to remove you shoot using that colour of filter - and if you want to make it show you use the complimentary colour....

So sepia prints are yellowish and redish - so a complimentary colour to enhance would be blue or green....

You could also use channel mixer to get a blend of more than one channel.

Thanks for that David, I will give it a try.

 

[CT]

You often get blueish or purplish tints in areas on old photos Roy and it's down to several possible causes including airborne pollutants attacking the emulsion, particularly where there are cracks in the emulsion and pollutants have got underneath. It can also be due to insufficient washing at the time of printing and all sorts of strange spots and marks can appear - even years later.

Those stains are very difficult to work on. Converting to B&W may be the best way forward depending on how bad the staining is or how much of your life you can put into the restoration. As someone said though - don't scan in Greyscale.

I never like converting to B&W from sepia as some of those old sepia prints are beautiful, although the actual tones vary a lot. The nicer ones are very difficult to reproduce digitally too if you want to return to sepia when you're done.