Degradation of old prints

hodyoaten — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 13:42:17 -0800

I just scanned in some 1970s-1980s family pictures (on print paper). Some of the colors seem washed out. Is there an easy way to improve the colors a bit? With some pictures (notably the ones using Fujifilm in the late 1980s) it seems there's a slight lean to the blue side of the spectrum, and with others (like older 110 prints) the blues are weak and the saturation is low. I think the colors were never all that good to begin with back in the 1980s, but they definitely appear to have shifted since then.

I tried playing with hue controls but all I get is psychedelic or technicolor looks.

Is there any easy way to make my pictures more lifelike again? I'm guessing that as the paper degrades, the spectrum falls off or shifts according to some sort of semi-predictable curve and it would be easy to compensate for this. I use an ancient PaintShop program but have access to PhotoShop 7.

Also are there any resources that talk about how the spectrum of various prints degrade over time?

My mp3's are expiring!

loquax — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 20:59:38 -0800

Can .mp3's go bad? I think I'm asking a ridiculous question, but it's happened enough that I'm wondering - I'll rip a CD (although it happens with downloaded music too), it'll be fine, I'll go back to it a few months (or years) later, and nothing. The data all appears to be there (as in the filesizes look ok), but all the meta-info is gone, and the tracks are unplayable. Sometimes it's the whole album, sometimes it's only a couple of songs, or just one. Which makes no sense. It has happened in the past when I've used some of those bulk-tagging utilities, but I chalked that up to the software (although if anyone can help me with that, it would be great too). What could be wrong? Is there any way to fix these things? Am I crazy?

For reference, I rip in lame, 160-320kbps, 44100hz, stereo, WinXP, no DRM or enhanced audio or anything like that. The CD's themselves are also perfectly playable.

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Degradation of old prints

My mp3's are expiring!