Over the last decade or so I've downloaded well over half of Prokudin-Gorsky’s remarkable collection from the Library of Congress in high resolution TIF format and spent many, many hours editing them in Photoshop and other photo editors.

Early on, my initial aim was to clean up some of the registration errors and remove color blotches and artifacts that should not be there but it did not take long for me to realize how truly significant these photographs are; they're not only important from an historical perspective in that they represent a lost era—that of pre-revolution Russia but also they're of great cultural interest as Prokudin-Gorsky photographed a vast diversity of subjects including people from all walks of life. Also, these images are the first truly high resolution, high quality color photographs produced in any number and reproducible format and thus they are very important from a photographic/engineering perspective.

The more one studies these photographs, the more fascinating they become. I say that from experience having edited many of the images—often spending many hours on just one alone. I've become familiar with the subject matter in these photographs in ways the casual viewer would not. I've found all sorts of detail that one would normally ship over but it's hard to miss when one is correcting the image down to a level of just a few pixels—one then sees the captured image in a completely new light.

It's a shame I can't post images here or I'd illustrate what I mean by uploading some of my edits. Also, I've learned much about the color/colorimetry and color filers Prokudin-Gorsky used by doing this editing (it's difficult not to after one's spend many hundreds of hours with them).