Requesting techniques/suggestions for correcting film fade

[DaveL]

Hi, I'm transferring several old16mm films to digital (via frame by frame image transfers) in an attempt to preserve them.
Some of the film is in decent shape and I can correct them pretty well.
However, some of 16mm film was very faded and I'm not able to get very good results with my skills. It's sorta like correcting log footage from scratch.
I've attached a frame of the original transfer scan, and then the frame with the best I can do using mainly the primary color corrector.
Does anyone have any suggestions/pointers on what tools to use and how to use them that might give better results?
I also attached a frame of a film where the color is skewed.
I would appreciate any suggestions/techniques for such faded images.
Thanks in advance

[AJL14]

Dave - I've done a lot of film-transfer color correction with EDIUS, and none that looks any better than what you've managed to do with the primary color corrector. Nice job - even though it does take quite a while to "get it right". Once you've got 1 frame corrected, then just go ahead a copy the correction and apply directly to all the frames in that entire scene. And perhaps to the extended scenes as well, if the scenes were taken on the same day with the same camera and film. Without going to something like Resolve color correction, which has a large learning curve, I don't think you're going to get much better results. Same with the faded scene of the person in the yellow shirt. EDIUS primary color corrector should be able to handle that type of fading as well.

Maybe some of the other guys have a better suggestion - but from what I see on the frames you uploaded, they look pretty darn good!

Good luck,
Alan

[DaveL]

Thanks for the reply Alan, and the encouragement.
From more research, I've learned that once the film has faded sufficiently, that information is gone forever (per kodak & archive websites).
This is not surprising, but is sad because I remember what that footage looked like when new, and it's sad to loose those images forever.
However, I've gotten a few "saved" primary color corrections that do get back what is still there, so at least the family memories survive in some fashion for another generation.
As you know, it's a lot of work to go through this process, as every reel is different and needs different corrections, but I'm getting there.
Thanks again,
Dave