Color or grayscale for scanning B&W film?

Color or grayscale for scanning B&W film?

  • Color

    Votes: 92 28.7%

  • Grayscake

    Votes: 229 71.3%
  • Total voters
    321
and a "color" scan "converted" to b&w is an average of 3 "positive scans off a b&w negative," conceptually it is the same, only you are approximating a multipass b&w scan instead of just a single pass b&w scan. For digital sampling, a multipass scan generally reduces scanner noise without altering your image at all. I don't get fancy during conversion, just Convert to Grayscale in PS or Save as Grayscale in Vuescan... both bias the average toward the Green channel. Through a fair amount of testing, this yeilds much less noise/grain aliasing than a straight "b&w scan" with my scanners (especially when scanning C41 b&w and using DigitalICE).

DougFord said:
Another vote for scanning in 16 bit gray scale.
Output is positive scan of b&w negative.
Vuescan/Minolta Elite 5400
Click to expand...
 
or you can just reset your clipping preferences...

>>If you use Nikon Scan, you get around Nikon Scan's tendency to clip the highlights.
 
sometimes for a final image I will knock it down to 8-bit... if I know I'm not going to tweaked anymore... it gets knocked down to 8-bit in your printer driver anyway for printing, right?
 
Only reason that I would scan bw negs as colour would be incase it gave me a nice unexpected colour cast. I have got some really nice sepia effects from a colour scan off my b&w negs.

It doesn't make sense to me that there would be any more information captured on a b&w neg, because there isn't really much there in colour to capture. Converting a colour negative to b&w after scanning is a totally different answer.
 
Tried scanning as color, greyscale, and even positive and can conclude that there's not much visible difference. Some say scanning as a positive and inverting it gives less grain, but you also get a rather low contrast scan which will be just as grainy after some contrast adjustments. What I found really helps is scanning as color, then checking out each individual channel to see which one is the sharpest and then setting that up as the preferred channel when scanning in greyscale mode (vuescan)
 
since photoshop was mentioned, does anyone use pse8 to scan negatives using a flatbed scanner & then convert to positives? i am looking for a cheap way to do an occasional scan, nothing fancy and was told this works fine. i tried the free trial version and had no such luck. tried their support forum and was told it should work. no help there! thanks!
 
gonzo74 said:
since photoshop was mentioned, does anyone use pse8 to scan negatives using a flatbed scanner & then convert to positives? i am looking for a cheap way to do an occasional scan, nothing fancy and was told this works fine. i tried the free trial version and had no such luck. tried their support forum and was told it should work. no help there! thanks!
Click to expand...
Well, the flatbed needs to have the ability to scan negatives- the light panel above the platen as well as the light below. I had 2 flatbed scanners and they were both pretty decent.

The image below was scanned with a Canoscan 8400F and processed with Elements 3. Long time back. Seems pretty good to me.
 
Last edited:
Photoshop can be used as a (flat bed) scanner interface but you need a free TWAIN driver for that. Look for a TWAIN driver for your particular scanner and install it (PC). I found the driver from Canon support pages for my Canon 8800f scanner. Having installed the driver you can use your scanner through PS selecting "File" - "Import" and selecting your scanner from the list.

Edit: I might add that I scan my b&w negs in 16bit grayscale.
 
Last edited:
Epsonscan 16 bit greyscale

Epsonscan 16 bit greyscale

Frank Petronio said:
I tested, compared, and just scan in 16-bit greyscale. Of course I adjust the heck out of the image after I get the raw, flat (low-contrast) scan.
Click to expand...

Frank is Da Man! What he said. Aided by what Ken Lee wrote in his tutorial for B&W film scanning using an Epson scanner and Epsonscan software.
It has taken awhile to fine tune the exposure & developing & scanning, but I have made good progress so far. A recent example of Arista-EDU Ultra 200, a.k.a. Fomapan 200. Lightly processed in Adobe LR 3. Click the small image here for a larger version.

 
Looks good to me. I'm not planning on doing much with the scans other than using it to decide which negatives to print. I've recently moved & all my stuff is in boxes until we build a darkroom. I have a Canon MP560 it does have a white plate and the light underneath; it scans fine and comes up in pse but for some reason i can't get it to turn into a positive. the feature isn't available. i won't buy the software unless i know it works. 99 bucks is a lot and could always go towards film 🙂

januaryman said:
Well, the flatbed needs to have the ability to scan negatives- the light panel above the platen as well as the light below. I had 2 flatbed scanners and they were both pretty decent.

The image below was scanned with a Canoscan 8400F and processed with Elements 3. Long time back. Seems pretty good to me.
Click to expand...
 
i actually did get as far as importing my scans into pse, working on them a little but was unable to convert them into positives. for some reason the feature is "unavailable" so i can't try it out. hmmm, the canon support pages are a good idea though, will give that a try. thanks again.

for what it's worth i also imported the scans as a color negative first thinking that had been my mistake. turns out there wasn't much of a different at least with the equipment i'm using. maybe i should just go for a cheap film scanner???

Mablo said:
Photoshop can be used as a (flat bed) scanner interface but you need a free TWAIN driver for that. Look for a TWAIN driver for your particular scanner and install it (PC). I found the driver from Canon support pages for my Canon 8800f scanner. Having installed the driver you can use your scanner through PS selecting "File" - "Import" and selecting your scanner from the list.

Edit: I might add that I scan my b&w negs in 16bit grayscale.
Click to expand...
 
I scan in color, because I like the freaky results.

4782859812_af0e28938e_m.jpg
 
mh2000 said:
Bob, some scanners actually only capture one channel (red or green typically) for a "b&w scan."
Click to expand...

I was referring to the data actually captured by the scanner and send back to the scanner driver in the CPU for processing. It is in the scanner driver software where two of the channels may be ignored and one used. I believe it is far too complex for the limited electronics and firmware within the scanner itself to differentiate between initially capturing 1 vs. 3 channels.

The key point is that the scanner itself is comprised only of optics and some simple electronics. It is the scanner driver software, resident in the system CPU, that applies all the variables (like b&w vs. color, positive vs. negative, 16 vs. 8 bit, and output file type) that one inputs. So there is really no difference scanning b&w vs. color or positive vs. negative other than the strange things that Nikonscan, Minoltascan, or Epsonscan scanner driver software does with the file before outputting it.
 
Peter: rather than desaturating a color file which will still have the red, green and blue color channels, you may want to try converting to a greyscale file which will be 1/3 the size as it only has one channel.

I do not know how Silverfast makes a grey scale file. I do know that Vuescan merges the red, green and blue channels with user control about how to weight each. I have found that the Vuescan presets, which I seem to remember gives a bias to the green channel, works well for me.

See my post of two years ago which is the 3rd post back in the thread about how all scanners actually scan the R, G, & B channels then combine them in the scanner driver to make a greyscale file.

.
 
Bob Michaels said:
Peter: rather than desaturating a color file which will still have the red, green and blue color channels, you may want to try converting to a greyscale file which will be 1/3 the size as it only has one channel.

I do not know how Silverfast makes a grey scale file. I do know that Vuescan merges the red, green and blue channels with user control about how to weight each. I have found that the Vuescan presets, which I seem to remember gives a bias to the green channel, works well for me.

See my post of two years ago which is the 3rd post back in the thread about how all scanners actually scan the R, G, & B channels then combine them in the scanner driver to make a greyscale file.

.
Click to expand...

Well, this is for B&W negatives. I find, even with the gray base of Tri-X, desaturated makes a difference.. or I would get a very slight sepia tone when opened in CS5.

For Color Neg/Slides, I leave the saturation at "0" or the default. and adjust later in CS5 for color balance tweaks.
If they are badly faded, I will restore the color in SF8. I can get pretty close to the original colors most of the time.

I can adjust RBG separately in the Histogram if needed..Even for the B&W negatives. Not sure what effects in may have, since there is only a gray scale.
Not sure in 16bit gray-scale what channels are used though.
 
This might stir things up. Is the totality of your photography on the interenet? If so, why not just get a digital camera and have perfect images to share with lots less effort rather than the difficult process of making analog images acceptable?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom