How Do You Remove Grey from Vintage Graphics?

[maggie2]

I have loads of vintage graphics but many of them have a dirty looking background...the white or cream colored background looks greyed or has a browned look. I would like to know if there is any way to remove this discoloration and get the background back to a normal color. The picture below is an example of how the backgbround color has become discolored. So can anyone tell me how to get rid of that ugly background color? I have tried using the paint bucket but often that tends to also fill in areas you don't want to lose.



Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks,
Marg

 

[$1r_M4x1mu$]

use "select by color range"
Select>Color Range

when the color range menu shows up using the eyedropper, sample the colors you want to change

* Tip while selecting colors hold "SHIFT key" to add colors or "ALT key" to substract colors

then adjust the fuzzines slider in order to add or substrat color shades of the sampled ones.

once color shades selected just use Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation to change it to any color you want.

* If the colors was changed in places you didn't want it just use layer masks to revert it to the original color

here's an example whit the image you provided


Hope this helps.

 

[Steve]

There's nothing in the image that can tell you what the actual color should be.
You can mark the lightest and darkest parts of the image with Image|Adjustments|Threshold.

Then with a Curves adjustment layer adjust and balance of the individual colors.
The marked numbers are the balanced shadow and highlight adjustments.
The numbers to the left of them are the original shadow and highlight levels before adjustment.



On images like these you can also try Image|Auto Color and Auto Tone.

 

[maggie2]

use "select by color range"
Select>Color Range

when the color range menu shows up using the eyedropper, sample the colors you want to change

* Tip while selecting colors hold "SHIFT key" to add colors or "ALT key" to substract colors

then adjust the fuzzines slider in order to add or substrat color shades of the sampled ones.

once color shades selected just use Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation to change it to any color you want.

* If the colors was changed in places you didn't want it just use layer masks to revert it to the original color

here's an example whit the image you provided


Hope this helps.

Holy Cow!

That really works! Thank you so very much for that information. This one tip will save me hours and hours of work. OMG! I can't believe how simple it is too. Thank you again.
Marg

 

[maggie2]

There's nothing in the image that can tell you what the actual color should be.
You can mark the lightest and darkest parts of the image with Image|Adjustments|Threshold.

Then with a Curves adjustment layer adjust and balance of the individual colors.
The marked numbers are the balanced shadow and highlight adjustments.
The numbers to the left of them are the original shadow and highlight levels before adjustment.

View attachment 2432

On images like these you can also try Image|Auto Color and Auto Tone.

Hi Steve,

I haven't tried this method yet but I will tomorrow. Thank you for the help.
Marg

 

[hawkeye]

There are various ways to deal with it. The best method depends on what works best to give you the results you want.

Hue/saturation adjustment layer, targeted yellow, with this method you could change it to any color.