It’s been just about three years now that I’ve been using a drum scanner which has drastically changed my scanning process with color negative film. If we scan a negative, the resulting file we be a positive, but we will need to apply a 2.2 gamma correction.This one is for you DSLR scanning folks, or those who want more control out of your film scanner. To scan in 16-bit depth, choose 'Thousands of Grays'. Save scanned images directly as searchable PDF (Windows only) or as multi-page PDF files.If we scan a positive, an automatic conversion to Gamma 2.2 is applied. It can also readily scan just about anything from documents to books, magazines and even 3D objects. The V600 Photo comes with a built-in Transparency Unit Film Holder that accommodates slides, negatives and medium format panoramic films of up to 6 x 22cm.View, edit, and convert your old photos to digital files with the 35mm Film Scan Tool for PC and MAC from Kodak. It turns out that this manual inversion can work no matter what you use to scan your film with.5MP Scan Resolution: 2592 x 1680. While I love sharing my findings with the film community, I wasn’t sure that a technique I developed for drum scanning would be helpful to the average shooter. This means that I had to develop a method to do this on my own that can work for every image I throw at it.
Best Photo Negative Scanner Software Options ForTwo main choices are Negative Lab Pro (Lightroom Plugin) and ColorPerfect, a Photoshop Plugin. From File menu to import videos or photos into this Mac picture viewer.I want to start by mentioning that there certainly are some software options for people looking for automated color inversions. This best free photo viewer does not have image editing or enhancement features. It turns out that doing it manually does not take very long at all and provides you with a level of control and knowledge that helps you understand the process.Best Photo Scanners. Rather than looking for the one-click option, I wanted to dive deeper and crack the magic secrets of color negatives. While both of those plugins work well for a good number of daylight or normal image exposures, they can struggle when it comes to pulling delicate sunrise/sunset hues out of the highlights in negative film. Higher resolution than V370, and comes with OCR and Digital ICE for film. Scans prints, documents and small amounts of film (slides and negatives) at a time. A great blend of low cost with a great range of features. Update December 2020: there is a second video of a night time scene with a more challenging white balance, see both at the end of this post.First off, we need to make a scan of the negative. At the end of this article you can find a video screen capture of my editing process, to help illustrate how quick and easy this really is. Is particularly useful if you want to scan hundreds of photos or negatives.4 answers 2 votes: I have owned a license for Silverfast Ai, by LaserSoft imaging for almost 16 years. We will set the Film Type to “Positive Film” which will make it so the software does not try to invert the negative, then we need to go into the Configuration window under the Color tab and click on the “No Color Correction” button. Let’s start with the settings I used in Epson Scan since that is the scanner software I have.This is rather straightforward, we just want to make it so the scanner does no (or as little as possible) in the way of color corrections. The goal here is to make a scan with no adjustments applied to it, we will be doing everything manually in Photoshop. You can do this with whatever scanner or DSLR you might have, I made sure to test this method using both options. Try to position your film inside the scanner holders so that you have a bit of border (or the space between frames on roll film) showing.For those who are using a DSLR to scan their negatives the idea is pretty much the same. This is important and will be used later on. Notice that in the scan I have included a portion of the film border. If you are using a different scanning software the idea is the same we want to scan as a positive and turn off any software color or exposure corrections. Go ahead and make the scan, it should end up looking exactly like we see in the preview window of Epson Scan. I just used my little Olympus m43 camera that I use for a light meter to do this test and just took the shot handheld. I found that the meter on the camera was thrown off by the negative and I had to set the exposure compensation to -1 stop. You will definitely not want to use auto white balance as the negative will confuse it to no end. I then set the camera to daylight white balance and took an exposure. I used the same holder that came with my Epson v700 to hold the film over a color-corrected light table that I have. ![]() The first thing we must do is a rough inversion of the negative, which I do by simply making a curves layer and dragging the shadow point to the top and the highlight point to the bottom.The image has now been inverted, but is very cyan and bright. At the end of the article I will supply small PSD files with all the layers intact for both the Epson and the Olympus scans so you can see how similar the two are yet also the minor differences. That comes next.Moving forward for this post I will use the Olympus scan as I assume these days even more people will be using digital cameras than actual scanners to digitize their film. Remember that out of these messes of color we will get vibrant greens, autumn yellows, and blue skies. Due to the Epson film holder I used, the actual film border is just that little sliver in the top of the image that is darker than the rest, everything beyond that is the actual film holder. Click somewhere on the film border to make that your current foreground color. Make sure it is set to “All Layers” under the Sample menu and that you are currently on the background layer, not the curves layer we just made to invert. Use the eyedropper tool (press the I key) and set it on 5x5 pixel average. For you Mac fans out there, everytime I say Ctrl, you will probably need to press the Command key instead. I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts to make this process quick and painless, so hit Ctrl+Shift+N to make a new layer and press enter. The eyedropper tool should show something of a middle cyan color, like you see in the example here.We then will make a new fill layer with this color. On the layers panel, use the drop down menu for this layer and change the blending mode to “Subtract.” You have now essentially subtracted the film base from the image and set that as pure black. Your whole screen has now gone cyan in color. Press Shift+Backspace to open the fill box, select “Foreground Color” under the dropdown menu for Use and press enter. Typically all that is needed is to just not come over as far when setting the green highlight point, which results in the image appearing more red/magenta. Setting anything as a white point would not make this image work at all. At this altitude and under such clear skies, the colors were quite magenta and strong. In the image above I was high up in the mountains at twilight, just as the earth’s shadow was starting to rise into view with the vibrant Belt of Venus above it. You get to watch what each color channel is doing as you adjust the curves layer. I find that this layer clips the shadows a tad more than I like so I set the opacity of this layer to 80%.What you see in the image above takes care of the issue nearly every time for me and is one of the big benefits of manual inversion. The screen capture software doesn’t seem to show the cursor precisely where it was on the screen and it doesn’t show menus that I open, but it should be good enough to give you an idea. This is a simple screen capture and the first time I have done something like this, so please forgive any lack of quality in the video.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorAlex ArchivesCategories |