Arts and Photography tips and guide

If you learn and use the tips I'm about to show you, you'll know how to fix scans that are turning out red.

And you don't understand why your scanner is turning your slides red, then you'll be wasting your time getting low quality scans.

Why Your Slide Scans Turn Red

This problem has nothing to do with your scanner or your software. This reddish tinge on your scans is a result from what's called Color Balance.

Now, I'm not going to go into technical stuff here. But I want to tell you about Color Balance because it's VERY important in fixing your red scans later.

Every digital image is made up of a mix of three colors: Red, Blue, Green (or RBG values).

In most cases red is the dominate color. So an example, say your slide has an image of somebody wearing red shorts, or there's a lot of red flowers. What happens is, since red is a dominate color, it will also mix in with the other two colors, blue and green. Now you have a red tinge because those red pixels are mixed in with the other colors.

How To Make Sure Your Scan Doesn't Have A Red Tinge

Now you know a little about Color Balance and RBG values. And you're going to use this to your advantage. Here's how...

When you load your slides onto your scanner, make sure to get a Preview Scan. A Preview Window will popup and you'll be able to see your slide images as thumbnails. If the thumbnail view is a bit too small, there should be an option to zoom in and make it bigger. That way you can check if your slide is a bit too red.

Next, look for Color Adjustments, Color Enhance, Color Balance, etc. Different scanners give this different names. But what you're looking is something that will have three slider bars. One slider bar will have Red and Cyan. The second slider will have Green and Magenta. The third slider will have Blue and Yellow.

3 Action Step To Fix Reddish Slide Scans Right Now

Did you find the RBG sliders I was talking about? Great. Now here's how to use the slider bars to fix reddish scans.

And that's it! What you did was you balanced the RBG values so that red isn't the dominant colour. Again, don't move the sliders too far.

How To Get More Free Scanning Tips

If you're stuck trying to scan your family's slides, negatives, or photos, check out my free scanning tips, here...

http://howtoscan.ca/

Good luck with your home scanning project!

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