We scan at 16bits per pixel, this means the total ‘colours’ able to be captured jumps from the approximately 16 million colours that a DVD can reproduce @ 8bpp to 281 Trillion colours @ 16bpp.
In practical terms it means each channel, Red, Green and Blue, jumps from 256 shades each to 65,536 shades each.
This lets us recover as much colour as if left in the print.
It would be better to have an unfaded print or negative, but, when it comes to Empire a partially faded print is the best we have available to scan, and generally only heavily faded prints turn up, and it is getting worse by the day.
Well I’m utterly astonished at the colour you’re able to rescue from a red faded print. It seems like some kind of alchemy to me, like turning beetroot into gold. I can’t wait to see the finished preservation.