Red Faded Film Print – Dreaded Film Fade

Old 16mm and 8mm film prints often have turned red due to an ageing process and chemical breakdown, here is an example on the left of an 8mm print film with red fading as you would view it through the naked eye or by projection. They often look very washed out or lacking contrast.

Provided there is still some green and blue colour tones (cyan – Yellow) left in the print it is recoverable and can be corrected back, close to what the original may have looked like.

Our process includes cleaning the film then setting up our film scanner to remove the heavy red tint, we then use colour correction in DaVinci Resolve to further improve the overall look.

Eastman Kodak colour print stock used from the 1950s through the 1980s was made using three dye layers:

• Cyan – Fades with greens and blues disappearing.

• Magenta – More stable hence the colour change to magenta/red.

• Yellow – Warm tones gone.

Over time, the cyan and yellow dyes fade more quickly, leaving mostly the magenta/red layer. This creates that familiar pink or red-tinted look.

Some films such as Fuji fade to blue/green again these can be corrected to improve the look on digitisation.

This not to be confused with sepia tinted film, old black and white stock which may have been deliberately tinted, this looks yellowish brown in colour.

We see many of these red films as prints on commercial 16mm Films and archives held by companies and organisations. Often it’s the only asset left with the original negative or inter-positive being long gone. If you have this type of film then it’s imperative it is transferred to a digital master as soon as possible.

For further information on our film scanning see: Cine-film-transfers