Buze
Established
I scan the B&W negs as positive too. It seems the negative scanning in the epson software is a bit wonky; it also systematicaly try to clip shadows and highlights to make it look "better".
So I scan it as positive film, with /everything/ deselected (ice, auto-exposure, etc etc)
I "draw" the selction around the frame I want, then use the "histogram" dialog to set the balck & white point to the lowest and highest place on the histogram, the gray point at 1.0, and black & white level to 0 and 255. I also select straight "curves" for the highlight and shadows corrections in that same dialog.
I scan that, then invert it in photoshop. Normaly you will get a low contrast image, BUT will will have all the tones of the neg to play with as you see fit.
I gave up on color negatives, Epson or Vuescan are just a pile of crap and needs hours of fiddling with each images to get results. E6 is a lot easier (pretty much the same method as B&W !)
Oh scan at the highest optical resolution of the scanner, and reduce it in photoshop to whatever you like. I scan at 4800 and reduce to 2400 most of the time. Scanning at higher resolution oversample the signal and will always give you better tones, less grain & noise, after you reduce it.
I have made a small illustrated guide to my basic photoshop postprocessing for B&W there : http://oomz.net/mf/viewtopic.php?id=1675
So I scan it as positive film, with /everything/ deselected (ice, auto-exposure, etc etc)
I "draw" the selction around the frame I want, then use the "histogram" dialog to set the balck & white point to the lowest and highest place on the histogram, the gray point at 1.0, and black & white level to 0 and 255. I also select straight "curves" for the highlight and shadows corrections in that same dialog.
I scan that, then invert it in photoshop. Normaly you will get a low contrast image, BUT will will have all the tones of the neg to play with as you see fit.
I gave up on color negatives, Epson or Vuescan are just a pile of crap and needs hours of fiddling with each images to get results. E6 is a lot easier (pretty much the same method as B&W !)
Oh scan at the highest optical resolution of the scanner, and reduce it in photoshop to whatever you like. I scan at 4800 and reduce to 2400 most of the time. Scanning at higher resolution oversample the signal and will always give you better tones, less grain & noise, after you reduce it.
I have made a small illustrated guide to my basic photoshop postprocessing for B&W there : http://oomz.net/mf/viewtopic.php?id=1675
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