Thanks Wes...color correction is not as hard as people think. It really boils down to understanding Black and White. If you can correct the gray values of a color image than most of the color problems that exist will be history. I would actually correct that image using other more advanced techniques but the simple soluton that I described above works well for any skill level.

Jerry

Thanks for all the help guys, and jerry i think you will recieve a pm by me thanks for offering me your help. That is very kind of you!
I will try it out later on cause right now i dont have time for it.
Tofu i know that the image is old, should look old, etc.. BUT i'm making a digital photoalbum of it so the original will always be the way it is.
I realy like what you guys did cause i now notice my mom had a dog! hahaha. i did see the cat but couldnt see there was a dog to, now i can... wonderful program photoshop is!

Wendy, I was playing around with this when jerry717 posted his awesome dissertation. Here's a slight variation on his method. I wouldn't convert to greyscale here because in addition to losing color range, you will also lose tonal range(light to dark). You can get a lot of mileage out of levels and curves adjustment layers easily by expirimenting with the eyedroppers contained in these 2 tools. Just select the white eyedropper in the levels or curves dialog box and click on an image area that should be white. Then use the black eyedropper on an area that should be black. This sometimes gets you most of the way there. Use the grey(middle) eyedropper on an area that should be neutral grey. On your image, this will take a few trys to get a good result.

I stole your image and did this with a levels adjustment.
t

Krank

Yes indeed, the levels tool works the same way as the curves tool when using the eyedroppers. Other than that I don't like levels because of it's lack of control in other ways. It is equal when doing what you did though. I do prefer to keep the image a bit flatter though for further retouching and then finalize the contrast as a last step. That's why I set the eyedropper tools to a conservative setting. It is also best not to pick a highlight point in a catch light. (one that is already maxed out to pure white)

A simple way to find the lightest and darkest point of any image is to use the threshold command. By moving its slider all the way to the right side and back it up until you see image start to appear will tell you where the lightest area of the image is. You can then set a ref point. Do the opposite to find the darkest point.

Jerry

Jerry, thanks for the feedback. I agree that curves is a more useful tool than levels. I use it myself far more than I use levels. I suggested it here because I thought it would be easier to manage for someone new to color correction. Similar reason for setting white point in a catchlight. If its pure white, this has no effect at all. If there's a color cast, it gets balanced. Setting white point in an area with tone will bring that area to pure white, possibly reducing hilight detail. The grey eyedropper is the tough one. I had to go back and make sure eyedropper in the tools palette was set to 5x5 in order to get an accurate color sample. I also should have suggested sampling for grey in the light areas of the wallpaper. I got a much better result when I did this. Again, not how I usually do it but manageable for someone starting out Great advice on the threshhold tool, helps to maintain shadow detail. Again, thanks to you and thanks to Volkswes for giving me some new (to me) ideas.

NERDS!!! hahahaha

nice work guys

Screw You Pete.



Correct...that was my thinking too for sugesting the curves eyedroppers. They do virtually the same thing.



I chose a white point that was very slightly casted toward red to help eliminate the cast. I never set the highlight eyedropper tool to be pure white so it can not blow out detail and if used properly will actually increase highlight detail or pave the way for other methods to increase highlihgt detail. I often use a setting of 245, 245, 245 which is even more conservative than the setting I recommended earlier.



I agree that the gray eyedropper tool is a great way to make a quick correction especially for a beginner but it is very difficult to determine what should be gray on this kind of image. By switching to the Lab colorspace I could tell instantly what was supposed to be gray by manipulating the a and b channals. I often work in all colorspaces when correcting problematic images. Each colorspace offers very distinct advantages over the others. Here is a little food for thought. Every image has ten channals and the best way to correct any image is to use the image itself.

Cheers,
Jerry