OLD AGFA CT18 SLIDES

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Interesting to hear about your problems with Agfa CT18. I have several thousand slides in this material, some now over 30 years old. The only trouble I've had is with early slides that I fully mounted by putting in glassed frames - these have tended to suffer from mould growth and have in some cases had to be thrown out. I keep my slides in suspended files in a couple of filing cabinets so they are protected from the light; this may have helped to minimise colour changes. Storage is important for slides.

Regret I've not yet tried scanning in slides - I'm still only halfway through cataloguing them onto my computer - so can't offer you any advice on that aspect.

 

I share you pain. I've tried a mixture of scanner software, followed by Photoshop and even the Vista Windows Photo Gallery sliders. Bit hit and miss but I don't know of any magic bullet one-click fix either.

 

I have used the Auto colour button on CS3 with some success, especially the sort of probs you are talking about.
The trouble with sliders is the same as the days of hand printing, to correct a cast you have to filter in the opposite colour, so its a bit like focusing a lens to get a neutral colour.
When neg/slides have faded or the dyes have been damaged, they are on the cross (old colour printing term) as in your case, the sliders cant create a neutral colour all you can do is compromise.

 

I haven't worked with slides, but Picasa has a "Neutral Colour Picker" where you select what should be a neutral colour (white or grey) where the red, green and blue should be equally balanced. Picasa then tries to balance the colours accordingly. Worth a try, as it won't cost you anything - apart from time.

Richard

 

Sometimes the original colour is so far gone that the best option is convert to black & white. An alternative approach, which will not please everyone, is to desaturate and digitally re-colour. Here are two examples of the latter (not railway subjects), with explanations in the extended captions. Additional guidance on digital colouring can be found elsewhere in the same fotopic collection.

http://northernblue109.fotopic.net/p61228391.html
http://northernblue109.fotopic.net/p63497822.html

 

I found that applying a colour cast correction didn't really work. The method I used for the two below are one or two passes of colour balance adjustment, saturation enhancement and curves adjustment. By no means perfect but better than the originals!!