Time flies. It's been 27 months since I started this thread, and lots has happened. Here's a new summary.
My appreciation to all of you who have contributed methods, examples, and tools.
New summary, key things I've concluded about camera-scans of color negatives:
1. Illuminate the negative with a high CRI source (incandescent, LED, or flash), 5500°K best.
2. Shoot RAW with a good macro lens and good macro technique (alignment, film flat, best aperture)
3. Getting enough resolution is easy, color and tonality more challenging, but there are effective methods and tools. With methods below, we get automatic conversions of the quality we used to get from mini-labs.
4. All the automated methods involve some image analysis. This works best when image has a full range of tones, and no areas that "mess up" the analysis. Good options: Crop to the area you want analyzed, convert, then re-crop to desired image area, or analyze one frame, apply results to other frames.
At this point, my preferred approach is Negative Lab Pro and Lightroom:
- Camera scan capture of the negative, shoot RAW, import into Lightroom
- Spot, flip image if necessary
- Make virtual copy
- Convert virtual copy w/Negative Lab Pro, adjust with NLP's controls, sync settings as desired
- Another virtual copy if you want to experiment with other NLP options
- Export as desired. Or make TIFF file for more adjustments in LR or PS
- Links
Negative Lab Pro, also a Facebook group. See other threads here on RFF.
- Note: Now works well with film-scanners (scan as positive, convert w/NLP, can use IR dust/scratch removal)
Adrian Gabor's CNMY Film Inversion in Photoshop
- Camera scan capture of the negative, shoot raw, as above
- Open in PS, minor adjustments, histogram (centered, wide, but not to the edges)
- Run the action, adjust to taste
- Links
CNMY Film Inversion, also Facebook group.
- Note: Also works well with film-scanners
These scripts and methods for converting cam-scan of color-neg with ImageMagick:
-
Fred's scripts #Negative2Positive
-
Jaz99's #negfix8
Recently [early 2019] a number of posts on other forums report good results inverting in Capture One.
[ Remainder of text below from Nov 2017 ]
Minimalist approach:
- Camera scan capture of the negative, shoot raw, open in Photoshop or Lightroom
- Levels adjustment to give a good histogram (centered, wide, but not to the edges)
- Invert the image with Curves Adj Layer
- Put a big bend in the inversion curve till tonality is about right, see Post #68
- Add an "auto" adjustment (e.g. Curves... Option-Auto... Snap Neutral Midtones)
Better Color:
- Camera scan capture of the negative, shoot raw, open in Photoshop
- Levels adjustment to give a good histogram (centered, not to the edges)
- Invert the image with Jack Jzagaja's curve (see Post #8), or apply ColorPerfect (ColorNEG option)
- Add an "auto" adjustment
Very Good Color Method #1 (via Photoshop)
- Camera scan capture of the negative, shoot raw
- Use MakeTiff or dcraw to create linear tiff with no adjustments (will look very dark)
- Open in Photoshop and apply ColorPerfect (ColorNeg, film type, clipping, gray point, perhaps +sat)
- Add a Photoshop "auto" adjustment
Very Good Color Method #2 (via VueScan)
- Camera scan capture of the negative, shoot raw
- Use MakeTiff or dcraw to create linear tiff with no adjustments (will look very dark)
- Launch VueScan. Input from file. Select options (film type, check clipping, gray point)
- Select destination & file type, then hit "Scan" to process the image
- Adjust in program of your choice
- (Silverfast reportedly can do the same thing.)
Notes:
- MakeTiff is included with ColorPerfect, download separately to try it
- DCraw is free, but it's a command-line program, no easy user interface
- They do the same thing, results are a little different
- The DCRaw command: dcraw -v -w -H 0 -o 0 -q 3 -4 -T fileName
- ColorNeg settings: FilmType, ShadowClip 1.0, HighlightClip 0.25 250, rest to taste
Comments?
