Scanning Slildes vs Color Negatives

[68degrees]

It seems scanning color slides was easy. put them in the holder and click scan. They came out true to life.

Scanning b&w same easy. perfect.

When I scan color negatives they need so much time on each one to get them to look like the original. Have any of you had this same experience?

 

[Jubb Jubb]

yeh. colour shifts on negs can be a real pain. Every scan is different normally and requires different work to get them to the same tone/colour/tint/hue/whatever

 

[ruby.monkey]

I may be getting lazy in my old age but I now stick with slide film or digital for my colour photography. I find scanning colour negs takes too much time and effort for my liking.

 

[68degrees]

I may be getting lazy in my old age but I now stick with slide film or digital for my colour photography. I find scanning colour negs takes too much time and effort for my liking.

Ok so its true then and not just my scanner or me. Slide film and b&w seems so much sharper straight away and the color is right on in slides.

Im relieved to hear its happening to others as well. Color film is cheap, is processed cheaply and locally and quickly at CVS for 2 bucks and change but scanning a lot of it is time consuming.

 

[V-12]

Sort out the colour shifts in post processing, it is much quicker and more accurate than trying to do it with the scanner software.

 

[cabbiinc]

The biggest help for me was acquiring an IT8 target and profiling my scanner. After that the drastic color shifts usually are only seen on really bad film (stored 10 years after being shot before processing or just plain crappy film). I've also become very fond of Kodak and Fuji's films as opposed to just about anything else made in the last 50 years.

 

[68degrees]

ts not that the color is a bit off, I mean the contrast is non existent, the brightness is not right. They just look washed out. Looking at the negs they look properly exposed good contrast. The film is fuji superia processed at CVS. Are you guys only needing to tweak the color slightly or is everything not faithful to the negative itself? After a few minutes of adjusting it looks fine.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Color negs are a real pain to scan with good color. The orange base messes things up because the scanners were really not designed to deal with it. You'll get better results with slide film if you scan. I haven't shot a roll of color neg film in a decade. When I got my scanner and found it sucked for color negs and was awesome with slides and BW negs, that is all I used from then on. Life's too short to fight my materials and equipment.

 

[citizen99]

For colour negatives, I always get better results from commercial processors than from my relatively humble home flatbed scanner. Whereas, positives can turn out fine so long as the scene does not have extremes of lighting, in which case the lesser film latitude becomes a factor. (I'm talking daylight, landscape/townscape rather than studio work.)

 

[cabbiinc]

Scan-100924-0003 by cabbiinc, on Flickr
This was straight out of the scanner. An HP Scanjet G4050 at that (notorious for being sub par).

 

[Jamie123]

I'm surprised that you're happy with your scans of slide film given that you seem to be using an Epson V500. I find that my Epson 4990's light source is not strong enough for most of my slides so some of the shadow detail that's visible on a light table gets lost. My Nikon 9000 has an adjustable light source so it works better but it doesn't scan 4x5 so I still use the Epson every now and then.

Yes, it takes some time to get the colors right on a neg scan but I find that the end result most often is better than with slide.

 

[rkm]

I've been doing a lot of scanning with my new Plustek 8200i and Silverfast. I haven't had too much trouble scanning recent Portra negatives or HP5 b+w. However, I've been working my way through old family Kodachrome slides and they've been more problematic. The well exposed examples are OK, but the interesting thing is that the underexposed examples (which look reasonable on the old Agfascop slide viewer) are impossible to get anything useable from on the scanner. The old slide viewer is somehow more forgiving...

 

[68degrees]

Yes, it takes some time to get the colors right on a neg scan but I find that the end result most often is better than with slide.

interesting.

ya v500. wish i had more lighted area though it only has a small strip down the middle for 2 rows of 5 or 6. I just lay them (negatives) on the glass and cover them with a piece of glass from a picture frame, click preview and then select the ones I want and apply the clean up settings to each one. Im actually getting better at it now but still, the slides were a breeze compared. id love to get a 700. Ill read up on your nikon maybe someday I can find one. adjustable light sounds nice.

 

[Gregoyle]

It seems scanning color slides was easy. put them in the holder and click scan. They came out true to life.

Scanning b&w same easy. perfect.

When I scan color negatives they need so much time on each one to get them to look like the original. Have any of you had this same experience?

Yes! I was ready to give up.

But then someone suggested Color Perfect (formerly ColorNeg). Holy crap. With two mouse clicks the image looked better than it did after me messing with it for an hour in PS. I was blown away with how good the color was after just telling the plugin what type of film was being scanned.

I'm no post-processing wizard by any means, and I don't know much about the ins and outs of ColorPerfect, but I am sold.

Next step is an IT8 target to profile the scanner.

-Greg

 

[gustavoAvila]

ts not that the color is a bit off, I mean the contrast is non existent, the brightness is not right. They just look washed out. Looking at the negs they look properly exposed good contrast.

I don't know the particulars of your scanning workflow, but it is normal for properly scanned and exposed colour negatives to be very "flat".

(This is due to the wide exposure range captured in the color negative.)

To "perk-up" the image, it is necessary to apply a very aggressive tone curve.

 

[68degrees]

I don't know the particulars of your scanning workflow, but it is normal for properly scanned and exposed colour negatives to be very "flat".

(This is due to the wide exposure range captured in the color negative.)

To "perk-up" the image, it is necessary to apply a very aggressive tone curve.

Ya thats exactly what Im experiencing. Flat and perked up with Agressive adjustments. Nice to know Im not going insane...

 

[cabbiinc]

What software are you using?
Does the final image look very different from the preview?

 

[gustavoAvila]

Color negs are a real pain to scan with good color. The orange base messes things up because the scanners were really not designed to deal with it.

Scanners can handle any properly exposed photographic media that fits in the film holder.

The issue is with the (scanner) software color profiles.

For any number of reasons (faded dyes, sketchy development, expired film, missing profile, etc.), the software profiles may not adequately neutralize the negative's orange cast.

In which case, obtaining a decent image (from the color negative) is damn near impossible!

Fortunately, the orange base can be trivially removed by "locking" the film base color as described in the Vuescan advanced workflow documentation:

http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc15.htm

A variation of this is also discussed in Ben Anderson's blog:

http://benneh.net/blog/2008/04/21/better-colour-neg-scanning-with-vuescan/

My experience with this method has been very satisfying (using a Nikon V scanner).

Another issue with scanning color negatives (and slides to a lesser extent) is finding a neutral gray point to set the white balance. In which case, the following method may be useful:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/neutral-gray/

Often, it may not be possible to find a suitable neutral gray point in the image of interest. In this case, review the other images on the roll (hopefully shot under similar lighting conditions) and find one with a neutral gray point. In the Photoshop curves dialog (Ctrl+M), select the gray point and save it as a "preset". Use this preset to adjust the color balance on the image of interest.

Finally, adjust the image contrast to your satisfaction.

In many cases, the above steps will result in an adequate image.

Some other suggestions for getting decent images from color negatives are:

1) Stick with one or two film products
2) Use a decent scanner (IMHO, consumer flat beds are a waste of time)
3) Get proficient with Photoshop (this is non-optional)
4) And finally, don't give up! The results can be very gratifying!

 

[68degrees]

What software are you using?
Does the final image look very different from the preview?

I just use the epson software. If I dont do anything with the scan then no the final image looks the same as the preview. Terrible washed out no contrast milky. If I use the software and adjust everything then they look alright but it takes a lot of time with each image unlike black and white or color slides which scan perfect and are basically done with little to no adjustment.

 

[Photo_Smith]

I have no problems scanning negatives, most software has little difficulty in removing the orange mask.
here is what I see in the Epson software.

I'd go as far as to say with cheap scanners negative film is easier to scan as the Dmax of transparencies can be a challenge.

If you scan flat then take into Photoshop and do a small adjustment there you can get perfect results from negatives.
I'd go as far as to say they are as good or very similar to the optical prints I do on my DeVere.