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How to Get the Yellow Out of Old Pictures From the 1970s

Light is not kind to print photographs. All you have to do is look at old photographs to see this. Light will cause black and white photographs to fade over time. But if you have color photographs, particularly color photographs from the 1970s, exposure to light will cause the color to turn yellow. This is most obvious in old framed photographs that have been exposed to sunlight daily. This condition is so prevalent that most photo correction software comes with an automatic color correction setting.

Things You'll Need

Scanner
Scanning software
Photo-editing software

Instructions

- 1
  Scan your photograph to create a digital copy, using the software that was packaged with your scanner. This software is calibrated to work with your scanner, and will produce the best color copy. Select a high-quality scan, such as 600 dpi, so that you will have the best quality detail in your scan.
- 2
  Save your photograph to the desktop of your computer. Select a file extension such as .jpg or .tif as the file extension. .tif is a higher-quality photo format, but .jpg is the most common file extension for photographs.
- 3
  Open your photo correction software, or load a photo-editing website from the Internet. Many online photography storage locations such as Photobucket or Flickr have rudimentary photo editing software built in. Two good commercial software programs are Photoshop and Elements. A good free software is GIMP.
- 4
  Upload your photo to the storage location or open it in the editing software. To upload your photo to the storage location, select the “upload photo” button. To open the photo, select the “import photo” option from the pull down menu from the “file” menu option (File>Import Photo).
- 5
  Browse your file tree until you find your photo. Click on it to import or open it.
- 6
  Adjust the levels by selecting the auto levels option (Images>Adjustments>Auto Levels). The online software will have a similar button for automatically adjusting contrast.
- 7
  Adjust the color with the auto color option (Images>Adjustments>Auto Color). The online software will have a similar button for automatically adjusting color levels.
- 8
  Save the file under a separate name from the original photograph.

Photography