Images too dark-can I res-can?

[Bill58]

Pardon the dumb question, but my B+W (Lucky 100) scans came back too dark of a civil disturbance in Seoul the other day and I'm wondering if I can re-scan them to brighten them maybe one or two f-stops? Does that work w/o degrading the image?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[Sparrow]

You could try scanning as a slide (colour positive) then invert, desaturate and set the levels/curves in Photoshop, I’ve have had some reasonable results like that.

However, if there’s nothing at all in the dark bits no amount of PS wizardry will help, sadly

 

[ZeissFan]

Right, you can't create what doesn't exist on the negative.

However, you might be able to pull usable images with careful rescanning and work in an image editor.

 

[Sparrow]

This was one I had no choice but to recover, it was maybe 3 stops off, I spent a lot of time to get it to this, but the blocked bits are still there, just a little smaller