affinity photo Greyscale and colour profiles

[itsRachel]

Does anyone have advice on how to improve the quality of the copy I have made? The original is the smaller, cool and clear toned print and mine is the larger, muddy, not very nice copy. My dad took the lovely original of my grandparents and I want to make a copy he can see more clearly. I've got myself thoroughly confused by colour profiles anyway, never mind how greyscale fits into this. I understand that I need to convert to a greyscale format as it seems to scan through as a colour format. After doing this and exporting  it shows as Grey/8 Greyscale D50 but the print is not very nice at all, as shown in my attachment. I have looked through existing topics but have only become more confused 😒

[Alfred]

Although it’s possible to use a resampling algorithm such as Lanczos3 from within Affinity Photo, I’m a great believer in turning to purpose-built software for this kind of work. I freely admit that I’m probably more than slightly influenced by the fact that earlier today I availed myself of a superb upgrade offer for the latest version of BenVista PhotoZoom Pro!

[Ldina]

@itsRachel Rachael, can you upload your original scan, so we can take a look and provide more in-depth guidance? Not sure how you proceeded in your work, so more detail might be helpful. Getting good results is definitely possible, depending on the quality of the original, but your original looks quite good. 

[Ldina]

@itsRachel One more thing...what is your final desired output?

Neutral B&W, a toned image (sepia, brown tone, cool tone, etc.)

And finally, do you want it printed? B/W print, Toned Print, or just an image that can be displayed on a monitor, smartphone, tablet, etc?

The answer to these questions will have an impact on how things are done.

[NotMyFault]

3 hours ago, itsRachel said:

I understand that I need to convert to a greyscale format as it seems to scan through as a colour format.

No need. Just stay with RGB, it is far easier.

For editing, use RGB/16 (not RGB/8) to preserve tones.

[smadell]

Hi, @itsRachel. I doubt that a change in color profile will solve anything for you. Your scanner has produced a “flat” result - one with very little contrast. This can be addressed easily in Affinity Photo. I downloaded your attached JPG (in the first post) and it only took a few minutes to get a result that looks more like the original photo. (And this is on my iPad, using my sausage fingers, only!) I applied 4 layers - 2 adjustments and 2 live filters (and only to the scanned photo portion, hence the masks that you can see in the Layers panel). A screenshot is attached. No change in color profile at any point.

[itsRachel]

8 hours ago, Ldina said:

@itsRachel Rachael, can you upload your original scan, so we can take a look and provide more in-depth guidance? Not sure how you proceeded in your work, so more detail might be helpful. Getting good results is definitely possible, depending on the quality of the original, but your original looks quite good. 

I lost the original but I've scanned it again for you. I'd like to print it black & white, natural looking, no tones. I then cropped it and changed the colour profile - sounds like I didn't need to do that though.  I changed the profile because when I used to use GIMP, I was advised to change the mode to greyscale from RGB for black & white prints and I thought this was the same thing. I then printed it on my cannon ip8750

 

 

nnnnnnnnnnnnneed to

[itsRachel]

6 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

No need. Just stay with RGB, it is far easier.

For editing, use RGB/16 (not RGB/8) to preserve tones.

Thanks for the tip

[itsRachel]

2 hours ago, smadell said:

Hi, @itsRachel. I doubt that a change in color profile will solve anything for you. Your scanner has produced a “flat” result - one with very little contrast. This can be addressed easily in Affinity Photo. I downloaded your attached JPG (in the first post) and it only took a few minutes to get a result that looks more like the original photo. (And this is on my iPad, using my sausage fingers, only!) I applied 4 layers - 2 adjustments and 2 live filters (and only to the scanned photo portion, hence the masks that you can see in the Layers panel). A screenshot is attached. No change in color profile at any point.

Sausage fingers 😄 Thanks for taking the time to do that. I have a hell of a lot to learn is what I take from this.

 

[Ldina]

@itsRachel Thanks for uploading the scanned image. 

First comment. That was a VERY low resolution scan! I'd recommend scanning 16 bit and at least 300 Pixels per Inch, preferably higher (600 or 1200) so you have a higher Rez image to work with.

1. My first step was to Resample the image, doubling both the width and height (i.e., 4X the original area), then converted to 16 bit RGB.

2. I added a "cleanup" pixel layer to remove some of the heavier blemishes, scratches, etc, using the Healing Brush and InPainting Brush.

3. I added a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer (set to Grayscale) to eliminate any color, since you wanted straight B&W.

4. I used Curves to adjust the tonal range, then did some extra cleanup with "Dust & Scratches" filter. 

5. Clarity and Sharpening were done very gently because this low-res scan had a lot of artifacts and I didn't want to accentuate them.

6. Finally, I added a Fill Layer set to White, and used a Mask over the image area. This gave you a clean white border on the outside. 

I have attached my AP v2.4.0 file, so you can see what was done to the file, plus a high quality JPG. The file is still not very high resolution, but you could get a decent 8x10 inch print out of it. Feel free to adjust the image, especially to tonality, to your preference. Hope this was somewhat instructive and helpful. 

 

Grandparents BW.afphoto

[Ldina]

...and in case you want it, here's a Sepia version in JPG format. 

[NotMyFault]

Just for fun i spent 20 minutes colorizing this nice photo.

just made selections by brush, then added fill layers or vector shapes or pixel layers and chosen a nice color.

All added layers must be set to blend mode „color“

 

 

grandparents colorized.afphoto

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Just for fun i spent 20 minutes colorizing this nice photo.

Nice work, although I think a more muted colour for the dress would work best. And you neglected to recolour a couple of prominent objects on the left of the picture: the chimney pot should probably be terracotta rather than grey, and that roof would look better if it matched the other roof. The structure in front of the window behind the couple looks as though it’s supported by wooden poles, in which case the upright should be brown rather than grey; the thing (whatever it is!) at the bottom of the hedge doesn’t look like stone, so it might look more natural in brown, too.

[NotMyFault]

I said i spent 20 Minutes 😂

This was intended as teaser to verify if the OP would like such coloring.

He may continue the work.

Intentionally i used fill layers so the colors can be changed any time later.

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, NotMyFault said:

I said i spent 20 Minutes 😂

Yes, you did! Impressively quick work for what you’ve achieved. I just think another a few minutes to add some finishing touches would be time well spent, especially on little things like the chimney pot, the woman’s hair and the man’s left ear.

[carl123]

1 minute ago, NotMyFault said:

I said i spent 20 Minutes

20 seconds using an online AI colouriser

We will soon be obsolete for a lot of tasks like this

[NotMyFault]

And i failed into a trap again tried to use the inherent mask of fill layers. This spoiled the results. I switched to use vector shapes and dedicated mask layers later.

The issue:

If you change the color of a fill layer later, this color (by unfixed UI bugs) will affect the fill color AND the inherent mask, leading to reduced opacity of the fill layer which could not be corrected easily.

 

[NotMyFault]

2 minutes ago, carl123 said:

We will soon be obsolete for a lot of tasks like this

It’s all about the fun of doing something with you own hands.

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, carl123 said:

20 seconds using an online AI colouriser

It’s interesting that the chimney on the left was missed out completely. Likewise the man’s left ear, which (unlike @NotMyFault’s version) didn’t get coloured at all.

Edited to add: That poor woman’s left wrist and hand look like they’re in dire need of medical attention!

[carl123]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

It’s interesting that the chimney on the left was missed out completely. Likewise the man’s left ear, which (unlike @NotMyFault’s version) didn’t get coloured at all.

Shush, the AI is listening it will adapt for its next version

[NotMyFault]

Spent some more minutes to improve.

 

grandparents colorized.afphoto

[itsRachel]

12 hours ago, Ldina said:

@itsRachel Thanks for uploading the scanned image. 

First comment. That was a VERY low resolution scan! I'd recommend scanning 16 bit and at least 300 Pixels per Inch, preferably higher (600 or 1200) so you have a higher Rez image to work with.

1. My first step was to Resample the image, doubling both the width and height (i.e., 4X the original area), then converted to 16 bit RGB.

2. I added a "cleanup" pixel layer to remove some of the heavier blemishes, scratches, etc, using the Healing Brush and InPainting Brush.

3. I added a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer (set to Grayscale) to eliminate any color, since you wanted straight B&W.

4. I used Curves to adjust the tonal range, then did some extra cleanup with "Dust & Scratches" filter. 

5. Clarity and Sharpening were done very gently because this low-res scan had a lot of artifacts and I didn't want to accentuate them.

6. Finally, I added a Fill Layer set to White, and used a Mask over the image area. This gave you a clean white border on the outside. 

I have attached my AP v2.4.0 file, so you can see what was done to the file, plus a high quality JPG. The file is still not very high resolution, but you could get a decent 8x10 inch print out of it. Feel free to adjust the image, especially to tonality, to your preference. Hope this was somewhat instructive and helpful. 

 

Thank you very much for this. I didn't know it was possible to change the resolution when scanning, so it is a good job I've learned that. The default setting is 300 dpi - wouldn't that be adequate normally? Obviously not in this case but that's what I've understood to be acceptible resolution when editing images. I will definitely set it higher in future. I'm going to try and recreate the positive changes you have made, lots of helpful information, many thanks

Grandparents BW.afphoto 21.15 MB · 0 downloads

 

[itsRachel]

2 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Spent some more minutes to improve.

 

grandparents colorized.afphoto 5.82 MB · 1 download

That's brilliant! Thanks so much, I think my next idea was to look into colourising so that it a really fun and quite moving introduction. I will print that to show my dad, think he will love it.

[itsRachel]

4 hours ago, carl123 said:

20 seconds using an online AI colouriser

We will soon be obsolete for a lot of tasks like this

😰

 

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, itsRachel said:

I didn't know it was possible to change the resolution when scanning, so it is a good job I've learned that. The default setting is 300 dpi - wouldn't that be adequate normally?

300 dpi is standard for colour printing, but that only applies if you’re outputting at the same size. In this case you want an enlarged image, so the effective resolution drops accordingly.

Although 300 dpi is commonly recommended for same-size output, you might want to go higher for things like maps that could be examined at very close quarters or with a magnifying glass. At the other end of the scale, roadside banners are often printed at 75 dpi or less, since no one is ever going to view them at close range.