S
shaaktiman
Guest
About 2 years ago I decided on a workflow that I know many others here also use. Since this is a hobby and not a profession for me I have the luxury of continuing to use film, both rolling my own from bulk and developing it myself. But then I find it far easier to eschew the traditional wet darkroom in favor of scanning, retouching and printing my photos digitally. For a long time the weakest link in this system was scanning. I spent months researching and learning by trial and error how to best turn my black and white negs into quality scans without the benefit of a drum scanner or other pro level equipment.
I thought I’d share a few tips and tricks I learned that would have saved me a lot of time and frustration had someone given them to me 2 years ago. Hopefully some of you will find them useful.
• Obtain a full copy of Photoshop CS. Buy, borrow or steal it if you have to. It has a few powerful tools that will make a visible difference in the quality of your scans. Neither the LE version nor the less expensive clones have these tools. If I had to choose, I would spend a little less on my scanner in order to get this program. If it is really just too expensive, buy an older version cheaply. Photoshop 7 or CS1 full version will be far better than a new version of elements.
• Once you have photoshop, spend your time learning how to use curves. It is hard at first but will enable you to do almost everything you need in one tool. Most of PS’s other image adjustment tools are just simplified (and less powerful) incarnations of curves. A good curves user will probably not need to use anything else for their contrast and color corrections. (Including recapturing “lost” shadow detail.)
• Vuescan is the best driver software out there. It is cheap and made a noticeable difference in my scan quality.
• Scan for the highlights. Use the brightness (exposure) slider to find the highest exposure point where none of the highlights are blown. Don’t worry about seemingly blocked up shadows. Even though it looks black the information is in there and you will be able to recapture most of it later. Not so of blown highlights. In scanning you are not trying to get a perfect image. You are just trying to get as much information from the neg into the computer. More exposure equals more information. Thus, lightening an image is easier than darkening it.
• I have found that if you are using the above technique, scanning in RGB is helpful. This is one of the neverending controversies in scanning threads. This is just my own experience. Please don’t freak out and send me an angry reply as to why I am wrong. People seem to get emotional over the grayscale/RGB at scan thing. I don’t know why.
• Always scan at the highest bit depth possible. Change your bit depth down to 8 bits (for B/W) or 32 bits (color) after you have adjusted the contrast and color.
• Always scan at the highest resolution your scanner is capable of. Then, in photoshop, use image size to reduce the size to whatever you need. Be sure to use Bicubic Sharper when downsizing. This is one of the easiest and most potent things to do to improve detail quality.
• Don’t use the driver software to downsample your file from a larger size for you! Even if you have vuescan. Photoshop (especially when using Bicubic Sharper) is a thousand times better at it.
• Sharpen as your last step before output. Sharpen more for inkjet printing and less for web. Use unsharp mask.
• Keep your radius below 1 pixel whenever possible when sharpening for web viewing.
• For inkjet output a good rule of thumb is to keep the radius as what your resolution is divided by 200. So if you print at a final resolution of 400, your sharpening radius should be 2. Generally, the image should look a little too sharp on screen to get a good inkjet print.
• If curves are confusing to you, try the shadow/highlight tool under the Image–adjustments menu. It is great for adjusting contrast and recapturing shadow detail.
• Always view your image at 100% to see what it really looks like. You can also use 50%, 25% or 12.5% but don’t use the inbetween percentages. You get a better quality image viewing it at the other %’s.
• Don’t use the driver software filters such as sharpen or grain dissolve. They suck. Fix this stuff later yourself.
• T-grain films scan the best out of the B/W options.
• Lower contrast negs scan more easily than high. Thin negs scan more easily than thick. I found Diafine to be a good developer for this reason.
• A good way to add an even layer of grain if extensive retouching has given you uneven patches of smooth and film graininess is to make a new layer in photoshop. Fill it with a 50% gray (50% of every color) and set the layer blending option to Overlay. Then add noise (monochrome) to taste. This works for both color and B/W images.
If I think of anything else I’ll add it. I hope at least some of these are helpful to a few scanning novices out there. Feel free to ask any questions.
I thought I’d share a few tips and tricks I learned that would have saved me a lot of time and frustration had someone given them to me 2 years ago. Hopefully some of you will find them useful.
• Obtain a full copy of Photoshop CS. Buy, borrow or steal it if you have to. It has a few powerful tools that will make a visible difference in the quality of your scans. Neither the LE version nor the less expensive clones have these tools. If I had to choose, I would spend a little less on my scanner in order to get this program. If it is really just too expensive, buy an older version cheaply. Photoshop 7 or CS1 full version will be far better than a new version of elements.
• Once you have photoshop, spend your time learning how to use curves. It is hard at first but will enable you to do almost everything you need in one tool. Most of PS’s other image adjustment tools are just simplified (and less powerful) incarnations of curves. A good curves user will probably not need to use anything else for their contrast and color corrections. (Including recapturing “lost” shadow detail.)
• Vuescan is the best driver software out there. It is cheap and made a noticeable difference in my scan quality.
• Scan for the highlights. Use the brightness (exposure) slider to find the highest exposure point where none of the highlights are blown. Don’t worry about seemingly blocked up shadows. Even though it looks black the information is in there and you will be able to recapture most of it later. Not so of blown highlights. In scanning you are not trying to get a perfect image. You are just trying to get as much information from the neg into the computer. More exposure equals more information. Thus, lightening an image is easier than darkening it.
• I have found that if you are using the above technique, scanning in RGB is helpful. This is one of the neverending controversies in scanning threads. This is just my own experience. Please don’t freak out and send me an angry reply as to why I am wrong. People seem to get emotional over the grayscale/RGB at scan thing. I don’t know why.
• Always scan at the highest bit depth possible. Change your bit depth down to 8 bits (for B/W) or 32 bits (color) after you have adjusted the contrast and color.
• Always scan at the highest resolution your scanner is capable of. Then, in photoshop, use image size to reduce the size to whatever you need. Be sure to use Bicubic Sharper when downsizing. This is one of the easiest and most potent things to do to improve detail quality.
• Don’t use the driver software to downsample your file from a larger size for you! Even if you have vuescan. Photoshop (especially when using Bicubic Sharper) is a thousand times better at it.
• Sharpen as your last step before output. Sharpen more for inkjet printing and less for web. Use unsharp mask.
• Keep your radius below 1 pixel whenever possible when sharpening for web viewing.
• For inkjet output a good rule of thumb is to keep the radius as what your resolution is divided by 200. So if you print at a final resolution of 400, your sharpening radius should be 2. Generally, the image should look a little too sharp on screen to get a good inkjet print.
• If curves are confusing to you, try the shadow/highlight tool under the Image–adjustments menu. It is great for adjusting contrast and recapturing shadow detail.
• Always view your image at 100% to see what it really looks like. You can also use 50%, 25% or 12.5% but don’t use the inbetween percentages. You get a better quality image viewing it at the other %’s.
• Don’t use the driver software filters such as sharpen or grain dissolve. They suck. Fix this stuff later yourself.
• T-grain films scan the best out of the B/W options.
• Lower contrast negs scan more easily than high. Thin negs scan more easily than thick. I found Diafine to be a good developer for this reason.
• A good way to add an even layer of grain if extensive retouching has given you uneven patches of smooth and film graininess is to make a new layer in photoshop. Fill it with a 50% gray (50% of every color) and set the layer blending option to Overlay. Then add noise (monochrome) to taste. This works for both color and B/W images.
If I think of anything else I’ll add it. I hope at least some of these are helpful to a few scanning novices out there. Feel free to ask any questions.
