Another Slide Rescue

One more story about old slides and then I swear I'll shut up about them for a while. You know how I like to rescue damaged images that might otherwise go in the trash. Here's an extreme example.

I told you before how on my first trip to Camden Market I found two slides on the floor and acquired them. Well, what I didn't tell you is there was also a third slide, one that was so damp, bent and crumpled that I left it behind. That slide pulled at my memory enough that when I went back to the market the second time, I looked to see if it was still there.

And it was -- which says something about how thoroughly and frequently the floors get cleaned.

Anyway, I retrieved it from under the table where it was lying with some other scraps of paper and trash, and for just a pound bought it and a handful of images in much better condition from the slide box. I couldn't even view it because it was so filthy, so I had no idea what the picture was.

I brought it home, took it out of the cardboard frame and gave it a gentle wipe-down with a Q-tip. I read online that a tiny amount of rubbing alcohol on a swab can be used to clean a grimy slide, so I also tried that, but it definitely removes photographic emulsion so I wouldn't recommend it.

Here's what I wound up with:

Yikes! As you can see, it's pretty badly damaged. First step was color correction.

Looks like it was taken somewhere in Germany. I'm basing that on the word "Reisen" on the bus, which is German for "travel." Looks like a '60s vehicle, and definitely a '60s or '70s building.

One good thing about this picture is that the whole lower half can be cropped out. It's just an expanse of concrete floor. That saves the trouble of trying to repair about half the photo.

My Adobe Lightroom skills are pretty rudimentary. I'm entirely self-taught, and I didn't try for a perfect restoration. That would take ages, if it were even possible. But in about half an hour I was able to roughly patch that big white spot and take out some of the bigger fibers and other bits of debris.

I'm sure with more attention to detail I could do a much better job, but this at least lets us see more or less what the photographer intended. It's not a bad picture, given the interesting architectural shapes.

Processing it through Waterlogue hides the damage even more.

Here's a more vivid version, if you like more color.

Anyway, it was fun to experiment with this and see what could be done with a picture that was otherwise almost certainly headed for the dustbin!