Digital process after scanning black and white negative?

[Redseele]

Hi everyone,

I shoot mostly black and white negative film (mostly tri-x) and develop it myself. In the process of doing this I've learned to get negatives with very good tonal range. When I scan them i, of course, always get very flat images.

Here is my question though: how do you process your black and white scanned film? I am curious because usually i just increase contrast in Lightroom and play with the highlights and shadow sliders. Still however, sometimes i feel that my pictures are kind of flat.

I know that a lot of people use silver efex pro to get great results converting from color to black and white, but what do you people do? Do you modify contrast a lot from the original? Below you can see one example of mine.

Lately i've become interested in trying to reproduce the tones of Lith Printing (this all has to di with my admiration of Anton Corbijn's work) and it made me wonder how i could reproduce that look digitally from a black and white negative.

Thank you


A couple by Mahler_seele, on Flickr

 

[Noll]

My basic strategy is to open the image in GIMP, then use the curves tool to adjust contrast accordingly. Sometimes this results in an "S" curve, other times it is bowed upward or downward, and occasionally it is just a straight line with the edges shortened up. Exciting, eh?

 

[jschrader]

I just started some time ago with scanning, and I would not claim to be experienced; but you asked what we do, so this is what I do:

I use mostly only the "level" sliders in photoshop. This is, in my understanding, already more than you can do in the lab. Pushing the dark or bright slider in means choosing a harder paper gradation. Moving the all three left or right means choosing longer or shorter exposure. But moving the mid-slider, you increase the contrast in the brighter or darker half of the picture and decreasing in the other. That is something at least I did never manage in the lab.

And then, rarely I use the "curves" sliders which is very tricky.

If you are not happy with the results, it is maybe because you need slightly more contrast, or you shold print the photo and not try to feel impressed on the screen😛

 

[Dan Daniel]

Use curves. Sometimes I will create multiple curves. One to deal with one problem, another for another effect, etc.

I also create layers specifically for dodging and burning. Create a Curve layer. Pull the curve to the left for the dodging layer, right ofe the burning layer. Now invert the mask (ctl-I). Paint with a white brush set at 8% or so to slowly bring in the effect.

Your image has nice contrast and such. What it might need is more direction for the viewer, which is where I find burning and dodging so helpful- pull areas forward, push them back, etc.

For example, here's an image with no dodging and burning-

And then with dodging and burning to give more direction-

 

[Takkun]

Generally I use Levels to ballpark it, and then play with curves. I'm not as adept as some are.
one thing to note is that, once the film is scanned, there's less leeway than wet printing. It's certainly easier to edit (which is why I scan), and you get a lot of detail out of the scan, sometimes at the expense of tonality. Once it's digitized, you have more dynamic range to start with but the same limitations of tweaking a digital camera file in terms of clipping. I've found it really, really helps to have a good negative to start--you can always add contrast but can't take it away if there's no tone on the film.

In your sample photo, you've got everything within the film's dynamic range, but you could probably let some of the clothing fall to black, and pull up the whites of the signage up closer to white.

edit in response to jschrader: printing sometimes makes a HUGE difference.

 

[jschrader]

edit in response to jschrader: printing sometimes makes a HUGE difference.

I agree, but also the screen makes a lot of difference. I do by chance have a screen that produces a picture very close to what I get printed - otherwise I would not know how to go on.

What counts in the end is only the print

 

[lynnb]

I use Lightroom 4's Develop module to process my scanned bw negs.

If you want a higher contrast look, there are two approaches I use (often both):
1. Global adjustments (contrast, clarity, highlight/shadow sliders, presets e.g. Filmbot freeware, DxO FilmPack 3)
2. Local adjustments (dodging, burning etc with LR brush tool)

For 1, as a starting point, try:
- increase contrast to 100%
- adjust black and highlight sliders to avoid or control amount of clipping
- boost shadow slider to re-instate shadow detail (often to 100%)
- set Clarity to 30
- then fine tune above settings, use curves adjustments in addition if necessary

These steps will give you a very contrasty result while retaining shadow and highlight detail.

For 2, use the brush tool to locally adjust exposure, contrast, shadows, highlights, Clarity.

Sometimes best to aim for Dan Daniels's solution, by leaving global processing "normal" and brush tool for local adjustments.

Cheers,

PS your scan looks good

 

[marko.oja]

My process:
Scan with reduced contrast
Lightroom: crop, exposure, contrast and just a tiny bit of clarity
Photoshop: spotting, dodging and burning
Silver Efex: possible structure adjustments (mainly hair in portraits), vignette
Lightroom: finishing touches, contrast and sharpening

 

[Filzkoeter]

I use a small neat plugin for photoshop called "Convert to B&W pro 3" from The Imaging Factory. I think it's freeware by now.

Here's a serial: http://web.archive.org/web/20130508...magingfactory.com/theimagingfactory/keys.html

You have to find a download link for the plugin as the original website seems to be offline.

It's really simple, it mimics darkroom parameters with 3 sliders (negative exposure, paper exposure and multi-grade from -1.0 to 5.0).
As far as I know the curves used with the multi-grade slider are taken from the curves of some multi-grade ilford paper.


Here I've only set the multi-grade slider to 3.5 and added a tiny little bit of tinting

took me about 10 seconds 😉
simple, fast, intuitive and delivers great and consistant results

 

[Tijmendal]

I use a Pakon (bless this thing) and the negatives tend to come out pretty flat. I use Lightroom to process and handle all my digital files. I bump contrast by 20 for all my B/W negs and then take it from there.

 

[anjoca76]

Great tip! I like the results.

I use a small neat plugin for photoshop called "Convert to B&W pro 3" from The Imaging Factory. I think it's freeware by now.

Here's a serial: http://web.archive.org/web/20130508...magingfactory.com/theimagingfactory/keys.html

You have to find a download link for the plugin as the original website seems to be offline.

It's really simple, it mimics darkroom parameters with 3 sliders (negative exposure, paper exposure and multi-grade from -1.0 to 5.0).
As far as I know the curves used with the multi-grade slider are taken from the curves of some multi-grade ilford paper.


Here I've only set the multi-grade slider to 3.5 and added a tiny little bit of tinting

took me about 10 seconds 😉
simple, fast, intuitive and delivers great and consistant results

 

[A Y]

I agree with those who say you have to use curves as well as dodging and burning. Sliders and prepackaged conversions will only get you so far, especially since the kind and amount of manipulation depends very much on the subject and idea of your photograph.

Starting with low contrast is good. For the Pakon, I output with -30 contrast in raw. For my DSLR scans, I just try to expose correctly.

In Lightroom, I invert the negative, adjust gamma with the exposure slider and maybe the curve tool, and use the gradient tool to reduce areas that have very high contrast. Then I bring the file into Photoshop, and add the contrast back in the desired areas with curve layers, and the Photoshop dodge and burn tools.

This done with a Pakon and the workflow above:

 

[Redseele]

I use a small neat plugin for photoshop called "Convert to B&W pro 3" from The Imaging Factory. I think it's freeware by now.

Here's a serial: http://web.archive.org/web/20130508...magingfactory.com/theimagingfactory/keys.html

You have to find a download link for the plugin as the original website seems to be offline.

It's really simple, it mimics darkroom parameters with 3 sliders (negative exposure, paper exposure and multi-grade from -1.0 to 5.0).
As far as I know the curves used with the multi-grade slider are taken from the curves of some multi-grade ilford paper.


Here I've only set the multi-grade slider to 3.5 and added a tiny little bit of tinting

took me about 10 seconds 😉
simple, fast, intuitive and delivers great and consistant results

I agree, that does look amazing! Too bad this piece of software is long discontinued and doesn't work with currenty Macs 🙁

I guess that I have always strived to follow the usual rules of photography (never blow highlights nor crunch the blacks), I guess I should just get rid of that idea which not many famous photographers use... and instead they just develop a style based on what looks good for setting a mood.

Thank you for all of this advice. It's all super useful to me!

 

[willie_901]

As nice as the "Convert to B&W pro 3" plug-in may be, there is nothing to stop you from obtaining an essentially identical result without it.

In fact, you don't even need PS.

I scan with no minimal adjustments using VueScan. As you know this gives a flat scan.I use the most informative scan I possible (tiffs, maximum RGB bit depth, etc.)

I import the scans into LR. The tools in LR are extremely flexible. Without any ill-intent, I do not think you have mastered the LR Develop Module.

One thing to try is male a LR preset that zeros all the Saturation Sliders. Then play with the Color Temperature Slider. From there you can make even finer adjustments with the Luminance Sliders. Note: I haven't even mentioned Contrast Clarity of Curves yet.

I usually remove tilt and converging verticals in LR. I often spot in LR too.

Occasionally I will have a damaged negative and it is much faster to remove scratches, etc. in PS 6. But often this is not necessary.

I dodge and burn in Viveza 2 (LR Plug-In)

I own Silver Efex 2, but I rarely use it on negatives.

It is very important to have a high-quality, calibrated monitor. I do, and was shocked that B&W prints from a local Pro Lab had essentially the same tonality, contrast and detail I saw on my display.

I was even more stunned a month later when I examined a 12 X 18 print from a color negative scan printed by the same lab. The shadow detail was identical on the print and my screen. I pressed the lab and asked them what they did to my file to get this result. They insisted they did nothing at all.

 

[danielsterno]

I use a small neat plugin for photoshop called "Convert to B&W pro 3" from The Imaging Factory. I think it's freeware by now.

Here's a serial: http://web.archive.org/web/20130508...magingfactory.com/theimagingfactory/keys.html

You have to find a download link for the plugin as the original website seems to be offline.

It's really simple, it mimics darkroom parameters with 3 sliders (negative exposure, paper exposure and multi-grade from -1.0 to 5.0).
As far as I know the curves used with the multi-grade slider are taken from the curves of some multi-grade ilford pap


Here I've only set the multi-grade slider to 3.5 and added a tiny little bit of tinting

took me about 10 seconds 😉
simple, fast, intuitive and delivers great and consistant results

Wow… she really popped out- really nice.

 

[Redseele]

I actually went ahead and updated the original picture. I just further added contrast to the picture and burned around. I think it is already MUCH better.

A couple by Mahler_seele, on Flickr

 

[stitchohana]

this is better!

I actually went ahead and updated the original picture. I just further added contrast to the picture and burned around. I think it is already MUCH better.

A couple by Mahler_seele, on Flickr

 

[Mike-D]

One thing that really works with VueScan and Lightroom is to scan as a DNG rather than a Tiff. In the output tab check "raw file", "raw save film", and "raw DNG format". This will give you a positive DNG file with all of the information in the scan.

After that I crop the image, set the basic exposure slider, then adjust white and black points to eliminate clipping. Then fiddle with the other sliders to make the tones look right.

 

[Blooze]

I use a small neat plugin for photoshop called "Convert to B&W pro 3" from The Imaging Factory. I think it's freeware by now.

Here's a serial: http://web.archive.org/web/20130508...magingfactory.com/theimagingfactory/keys.html

You have to find a download link for the plugin as the original website seems to be offline.

I used to have that plugin and lost it when my puter crashed. One of the plugins I didn't have backed up. I've looked everywhere for a download, but anything I found was too sketchy for me to want to try. Too bad, it worked well.

 

[charjohncarter]

For me each negative is different and requires different treatment. I use PSE and first scan but widen the histogram to include everything. I scan the negative as a negative, I don't know if this makes a difference, but that is what I do. The I invert in PSE and go to levels and adjust the black and white points that I want and the place the middle slider where I want. If I need an extra bounce in the middle tones I use Color Perfect's tonal control which lets you change just one zone.