Multiply

Technical: Kodak Ektachrome slide

Here’s a trick that I promised to post for Donna. Ordinarily I discard my imperfect shots. I have too many that are good. Here, my daughter wouldn’t have appreciated being cast aside. So to salvage the image, I used a trick that I read somewhere and managed to remember because it’s short and sweet. It will help. It won’t necessarily save you. But it will salvage an otherwise lost image. It really works when you least expect to get anything back. So to my wife who would have discarded this image in an instant, here’s why I save everything. (She’s probably right to some degree, but she won’t be reading this post.)

Multiply

The original is degraded by flare. It may have been inadvertent exposure of the film as the camera back was opened. I’m using Photoshop. Select all. Copy all. Go and make a new layer. Then choose the layer mode as multiply. Paste. The new layer will effect the picture as in multiply. You can repeat. You can tone down by lowering the opacity.

Level adjust, color balance

I used levels and did some color correction. Then I multiplied again. For the purposes of the exercise, I did not make any adjustment to opacity. Last, I used the levels to adjust color once more. It’s quick and dirty. You could spend a lot more time and get things better. The multiply layers is a good standby to help salvage a mistake in exposure.

Second multiply

Level adjust, color balance