Inspiring

Answered

How to auto-align channels

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 23, 2019
4 replies
4769 views

I have a client that sent me in a really lovely 5 x 7 glass plate color seperation negatives of the female lead of "It's a Wonderful Life" Donna Reed - some perfect Christmas work to be doing! I've manage to scan the three negatives and get those scans into the appropriate color channels. I've painstakingly done my best to align these using the catchlights in her eyes. Right now the face looks pretty good but if I look at the edges of the image, the alignment doesn't seem quite perfect. Is there a way to have Phososhop auto align these? Alternately, is there a way to move where the center of the rotation is when I'm in transform the way you can do with "crop". That way I could put the center of rotation on a catchlight and then move to the edge of the image to rotate until things line up perfectly.

How to

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Correct answer Chuck Uebele

You can't align them in channels. I would put them all as separate layers, align them, then apply them to the channels, using apply image or copy and paste.

If there are just 3 plates for RGB, then you can also put them into the layers, change their blend mode to linear light (add), then add corresponding solid fill layers for each color, set to lighten blend mode and clipped to the respective layers. That way you can see the result in color.

Semaphoric

Community Expert

Here's an article about the sort of camera likely used to take the photo: http://www.vintagephoto.tv/bermpohl_img.shtml

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

I always wanted to play with that type of camera.

ultrachromeAuthor

Inspiring

I got permission from the client to post this image reduced and with a watermark. Chuck Uebele's technique was used to align the layers. I had though I had it pretty good doing it manually but this is definitly better. Thanks again Chuck!

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

Very nice!

ultrachromeAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you! I'm trying to understand what gives this a unique retro color look. I wonder if the same color character would occur if you replaced the film with digital sensors.

If you're interested, here's the negs in the scanner...

Bojan Živković11378569

Community Expert

There is auto-align function from Edit > Auto-Align Layers which work with layers.

When transforming you can move the center reference point anywhere you want. If you do not see reference point when transforming then click inside Toggle reference point which is in the options bar.

ultrachromeAuthor

Inspiring

Excellent! Really nice to know how to engage the center point. Thanks!

Chuck Uebele

Correct answer

Community Expert

You can't align them in channels. I would put them all as separate layers, align them, then apply them to the channels, using apply image or copy and paste.

If there are just 3 plates for RGB, then you can also put them into the layers, change their blend mode to linear light (add), then add corresponding solid fill layers for each color, set to lighten blend mode and clipped to the respective layers. That way you can see the result in color.

ultrachromeAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Chuck! Sounds like a great idea and I did as you said and now have each of the colors as layers and used the auto align to get them lined up. I've never used "apply image" before and I'm not entirely sure what it does. When I go to apply image, it's grayed out. There are other ways I could deal with this now that the layers are aligned to get them into the appropraite channels but I'm curious about the "apply image" now.

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

You can just copy and paste each layer, if that's easier.

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