Most of us have thousands of slides from when we shot film, and many of those slides are poorly exposed with terrible color saturation. We hang on to those images for a variety of reasons, but the reduced picture quality always grates on our photographic nerves and we wish we could revisit the place or the situation and shoot it again.
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Recently I came across an old photo I took on the island of Crete that has always bothered me because it is too light, the contrast is too low, and the colors are to weak.This is artwork from the Minoan culture, a civilization that flourished a thousand years before the Greeks. It is remarkable to see such great art from 1500 B.C., but my images were disappointing because my light meter was inadvertently set to the wrong ISO. I was shooting Fujichrome 50 (digital cameras hadn’t been developed at that time).
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Photoshop can save a lot of old slides and give them new life. I scanned the original 6x7cm (medium format) slide with an Imacon scanner, and then I worked with my favorite two commands: hue/saturation and contrast.By increasing the saturation, the colors instantly came alive, and then with the addition of a little contrast the ancient mural was restored to what it may have looked like so long ago. I also used one more command – color balance (all of the commands are under the pull down menu: Image > adjustments). The photo had turned too yellow, and by moving the yellow/blue slider toward the blue I eliminated the undesirable color bias.
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About Author / Instructor / Photographer, Jim Zuckerman
 Few people are able to spend most of their time pursuing their passion in life. I'm one of them, and I feel blessed to have had a love affair with photography since I began taking pictures. In 1970, I decided to abort my intended career as a doctor in favor of photography and have never regretted it. Photography has enriched my life more than I can tell you. My career has taken me to over 60 countries, and I've seen and photographed wondrous things.
I specialize in wildlife and nature, international travel, and digital effects. In addition, I also shoot nudes, photo- and electron microscopy, children, and other subjects that stimulate my visual or emotional sensibilities. For 25 years, I shot a medium format camera, specifically the Mamiya RZ 67, for its superior quality. When I would lecture, I’d project the large, glass mounted transparencies, and it was really an incredible experience to see the brilliant color saturation and resolution of these slides. However, I went digital in 2004 because the technology finally equaled or surpassed medium format. I now shoot the Canon 1Ds Mark II digital camera with a variety of lenses. I am the author of 12 books on photography. My work is sold in 30 countries around the world, and my images have appeared on scores of magazine and book covers, calendars, posters, national ads, trade ads, brochures, and corporate promotions. For many years I've led photography tours to exotic places. These include Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Burma, Greece, The Czech Republic and Slovakia, Spain, Morocco, and Peru.
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