A method for correcting faded colors in aged photographs or film. The method automatically restores the color of the image by analyzing the color variance in the image and determining tonal curve for each channel. First, the interior of the image is selected and the image is portioned into sub-images. The variance of each sub-image is calculated, and the parameters are evaluated for correcting the entire image during scanning. This method will provide good color quality and preserve good density of the image.