In late 2016 I was at an estate sale and came upon some old film slides. Everyone had passed them by and, being the last day of the sale, they were cheap. There were some interesting scenes, perhaps some scene of the European countryside, or some old architecture. I did not think much of them until, in late 2016, I tried scanning them.
They were an interesting variety, looking like photos from England, France, Germany, and Italy in the 1950s. The scans came out dirty so I left the project there, assuming that cleaning them would be near impossible, and not worth my time to try. There were some images I could scan, and cleaning them could potentially ruin them. So, again they sat in a closet for some time.
In 2018, thanks to my hobby of film photography, I upgraded in a new Epson scanner. Realizing I could potentially scan these slides at a higher resolution, I began work again and realized their metal frame could be removed. There were two pieces of glass on each side, and perhaps this outer glass was the issue.
My assumption proved correct, and so, my work began again.
I rescanned all the slides, and began basic color-correction and restoration in Photoshop.
While these are largely still a work in progress, the images I have created are beautiful. These slides turned out to be a rare window into post-war Europe. Notes found within the collection of slides date the images from 1949 to 1950, supported by the images which show post-war reconstruction.
While these Kodachrome and Agfachrome slides were in very good condition, Photoshop was needed for basic spot and scratch removal, as well as color balancing. Much of the color-correction was done manually, however the spot correction was completed using the "Content Aware" fill option.
