Rewind to 1993, I was working for the Singapore newspaper group; it was the year I discovered the
Macintosh computer and
Photoshop! I managed to convince my boss to buy an
Macintosh Quadra 950 for me to set up the first Electronic Picture Desk, the 33Mhz Apple cost a whopping S$30,000-00! The 256 MB RAM upgrade alone cost S$10,000-00!
Like an addict I was hooked to the Mac and Photoshop! To enable me to use Mac after work, I even Took out a company loan and bought my own
Quadra 840AV; at a sizzling S$8,000-00 a pop, my wife think I am freaking mad ;)
The
Quadra 840AV was the first 68040 Mac to break the 33 MHz barrier. Based on the 40 MHz
68040 processor, and housed in a
Quadra 800-style
case, the 840AV included AV features similar to its younger sibling,
the
660AV. However, it's
AT&T 3210 DSP ran at a faster 66 MHz. It
also included one
Geoport, and sold for US$3,550, which was inexpensive
for what was, at the time,
the fastest Mac ever.
I started with
Photoshop 2.5 then quickly upgraded to version 3.0 when it came out in 1994.
It was around this time that I discovered I was able to restore color of badly faded prints and transparencies!
My first attempt was a faded trans of my young self taken at the
Melbourne Essendon Airport 1965, I was on my way to higher education in
Victoria,
Australia.
As you can see the Kodak Ektachrome transparency of 1965 has deteriorated to just cyan and magenta hues!
After scanning the faded slide with a
Kodak RFS 2035 electronic film scanner I proceed to restor the colour.
I remember it took me quite a few hours in Photoshop 3.0, take a look!
When I post this firework combo photo in Facebook to wish everyone a Happy 2013, I was happy that the photo received quite a few "like" from my FB friends :)
