Software for Converting Scanned Color Negatives

[neil poulsen]

What software exists for converting scanned color negatives, that's not tied to Adobe cloud products?

I've been reading about Negative Lab Pro, which sounds like a good product. But it's a plugin for Lightroom or Lightroom Classic, and Adobe cloud products will not run on my machine, which runs High Sierra.

I gather that ColorNeg (Color Perfect) is a similar product that runs as a plugin to Adobe cloud products.

It appears that FilmLab is a stand-alone product that converts scanned color negatives. Is this a decent product? It's a bit expensive: $249 per forever license. (But, worth it to me, if it works well.)

What other software products come to mind for converting color negatives?

And while I'm on the topic, I view cloud software applications as absolutely insidious. They put users on a treadmill that forces them always to have only the latest products and versions of software. For example, High Sierra isn't that dated; yet, "it's no longer supported." And, to get a more recent OSX, I need a more recent computer! And of course, that same dynamic cascades to so many other products. Really makes me burn! Talk about planned obsolescence.

[r.e.]

Phase One's Capture One. Since you have a Mac, have you tried processing scans in the Photos App? I think that it's more capable than people give it credit for, and it's bundled with the operating system.

[nbagno]

Color perfect is not tied to Adobe Cloud, you can run it on CS6 or for example. I run it on a Mac G5 for one of my scanners. There is also NEGMASTER which is a photoshop plug-in, but I just thought I would mention it.

[Peter Mounier]

Although I haven't converted scanned color negs in Darktable, I have been using Darktable for about a year and find it to be extremely capable for all of my post-processing. It is free open source software and will work on your mac. It is often compared to Lightroom, but more powerful. There are lots of tutorials for nearly all aspects of darktable on YouTube. Here is one I just found for converting scanned color negs ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8dlM_bCtig&t=3s

[xkaes]

And while I'm on the topic, I view cloud software applications as absolutely insidious. They put users on a treadmill that forces them always to have only the latest products and versions of software. For example, High Sierra isn't that dated; yet, "it's no longer supported." And, to get a more recent OSX, I need a more recent computer! And of course, that same dynamic cascades to so many other products. Really makes me burn! Talk about planned obsolescence.

This has been discussed before -- here and everywhere else. A look at all software over the last few decades shows lots of consolidation, and movement toward subscriptions only. Often with a free trial period, people are drawn in, and in the end have to pay or lose everything.
This is also happening to the operating systems -- which has greater significance. If you give up your free upgraded trial operating system (i.e., Windows 11) you are totally stuck -- unless you pay up in a year for new software, and sometimes new hardware.
The good old days of a permanent license are fast disappearing. I have lots of older software that is "permanent" -- for "life". But it's really only the life of my hard drive. If I need to be re-install the software, I can't do it because the licensing service on the INTERNET is no longer maintained by the company. This is true for older versions of Microsoft Office, SPSS, Adobe Acrobat, and many more.
Buyer beware!

[neil poulsen]

And, right on the tail of Apple announcing their new Studio computer. Hmm.

[Alan Klein]

This has been discussed before -- here and everywhere else. A look at all software over the last few decades shows lots of consolidation, and movement toward subscriptions only. Often with a free trial period, people are drawn in, and in the end have to pay or lose everything.
This is also happening to the operating systems -- which has greater significance. If you give up your free upgraded trial operating system (i.e., Windows 11) you are totally stuck -- unless you pay up in a year for new software, and sometimes new hardware.
The good old days of a permanent license are fast disappearing. I have lots of older software that is "permanent" -- for "life". But it's really only the life of my hard drive. If I need to be re-install the software, I can't do it because the licensing service on the INTERNET is no longer maintained by the company. This is true for older versions of Microsoft Office, SPSS, Adobe Acrobat, and many more.
Buyer beware!

'...You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store..."
16 Tons sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh0QiXyZSk

[Leszek Vogt]

Neil, I'm looking into ColorNeg and was told that my Elements PS (20) can handle it....an not sure if my Lightroom 5 can deal with this. My interest mostly stems from thousands of mot. picture film stills (5247). I'm with you on being anti-cloud.

[r.e.]

And while I'm on the topic, I view cloud software applications as absolutely insidious. They put users on a treadmill that forces them always to have only the latest products and versions of software. For example, High Sierra isn't that dated; yet, "it's no longer supported." And, to get a more recent OSX, I need a more recent computer! And of course, that same dynamic cascades to so many other products. Really makes me burn! Talk about planned obsolescence.

Are you sure that Creative Cloud won't run on macOS High Sierra? Two months ago, Adobe said that it does support High Sierra: https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/macos-high-sierra-compatibility.html

Adobe doesn't appear have said anything differently since. It does appear that Adobe users have been talking for some time about how much longer High Sierra will be supported.

At Apple's end, the ability to upgrade one's operating system depends on the architecture and capabilities of the computer. Apple's current operating system, macOS Monterey, supports, and is running on, my eight year old 2014 Mac mini. I don't know how old your computer is, but I gather that Apple stopped supporting it with operating system updates five years ago.

I suspect that this is the last year that my 2014 Mac mini will run on the latest Mac operating system, and I can't say that I'll be surprised or annoyed if it doesn't make this fall's supported list.

One option for you is to install Linux and run Gimp. I haven't looked into the suitability of Gimp for working on scanned photographs, but it has a good reputation generally, and an active, supportive user base.

[Neal Chaves]

[/QUOTE]One option for you is to install Linux and run Gimp. I haven't looked into the suitability of Gimp for working on scanned photographs, but it has a good reputation generally, and an active, supportive user base.[/QUOTE]

I dumped Windows in 1998 after installing Red Hat Linux, which came with the Gimp. It's all I have ever needed. Linux distros usually also incude SANE (scanner access now easy) support for many dozens of scanners, including older SCSI models. Linux still has full SCSI support.

[neil poulsen]

I downloaded Filmlab Desktop for a trial period, and it works surprising well. The newest version allows for the user to select one of several options to adjust for the scanner's backlight.

So, I scanned and imported a color negative I took at Castle Crags State Park in northern California a couple of summers ago into the software. After some Photoshop post processing, I ended up with the following. I'm not going to be so glib as to call it art; but, it's not that bad. Note that the same image in Photoshop looks a lot better than what we see below. It's unlikely I could have some up with this image without using some sort of color negative convertor.

I would call this a win for FilmLab.

One negative about FilmLab; it exports in the sRGB workspace. Are you kidding me??? That's hard to believe.

[j.e.simmons]

I’d suggest you also download the trial version on Capture One. I can’t put the why into words, but I like the way it renders colors better than Photoshop. There are a lot of videos on how to get started.

[nitroplait]

It appears that FilmLab is a stand-alone product that converts scanned color negatives. Is this a decent product? It's a bit expensive: $249 per forever license. (But, worth it to me, if it works well.)


I downloaded the unlimited 2 weeks trial version, and liked it so much that I got their forever license. You write $249, but as of writing this their website says $199.
I got mine on a 20% off sale last year, don't remember if it was some Black Friday thing or if it was a coupon I got when the 2 week trial expired - always worth waiting a little after a trial period, sometimes the developers hope to nudge you into a buying decision with an offer.
I am happy I bought it, but as my work method is to accumulate scans for processing, I think that "renting" the software for one or two months a year would have been equally economical and less committing - who knows what is available in 2-3 years from now?

I do film photography partly because I already spend too much time behind computer screens. Fiddling with curves and layers is NOT my idea of fun. FilmLab has layout that you will quickly understand if you are familiar with darkroom work and as such the learning curve is very flat. There are things I'd like to see improved, and it is possible that things can be done better in one of the advanced photo editors, but over all I am happy with it as it is.

[neil poulsen]

I downloaded the unlimited 2 weeks trial version, and liked it so much that I got their forever license. You write $249, but as of writing this their website says $199. . .

Yeah, I liked it as well.

Still unanswered questions. For example, I will probably only use Kodak Portra, or less likely, Kodak Ektar film. So, what's the best scanning methodology? I scanned the the Castle Crags using no auto features. Just a straight scan. But, might I get a better image scanning in some other way, or pre-adjusting the image using the Scan Software in some way, or using Silver Fast, which I have, or . . .

Have you tried Negative Lab Pro? If so, how does that software compare with FilmLab? And, I think that we can expect FilmLab to improve over time. Like rendering an image in Adobe RGB '98, vs sRGB. Boy, was that a let-down.

Hmm. Apple, Studio . . .

[neil poulsen]

I’d suggest you also download the trial version on Capture One. I can’t put the why into words, but I like the way it renders colors better than Photoshop. There are a lot of videos on how to get started.

I indeed have Capture One on my system, the latest version that High Sierra will permit me to load. I use it to convert images from a P45+. Capture One CH (Cultural Heritage) has a negative convertor plugin that works with CO. So, that sounds quite interesting. But, it's limited to CH users; so, I'm trying to find out more about that.

Huge learning curve, so I end up stumbling through CO getting to a final image. I have two hours training available to me from Digital Transitions and should take advantage of it. Wondering where I can get something more comprehensive? (San Francisco, or Seattle?) I've looked at the videos, and they're good. But, there's nothing like attending a class where one can have questions answered, etc. That's how I learned Photoshop, by attending a college course over a term, with assignments, etc.

[r.e.]

The good old days of a permanent license are fast disappearing.

I moved from Photoshop/Lightroom to Capture One a little over a year ago. I'd been considering the change for some time. I don't have a problem with Photoshop as software, but I increasingly felt like there was a question about who owned my computer, me or Adobe. I was offered a permanent Capture One license for US$50 in conjunction with the purchase of a new monitor, which cinched the deal. However, Capture One's pricing makes a subscription more attractive than a permanent license if one wants annual updates. Update every couple of years? That's financially unattractive too. Three days ago, Capture One said that it's releasing Capture One for iPad this summer. No announcement on cost to users, but I expect that this will also be structured to push current permanent license holders to subscription.

I think we're at a point where developers offer permanent licenses as a way to build a client base, with the intention of making permanent licenses unattractive as soon as possible.

[neil poulsen]

. . . I think we're at a point where developers offer permanent licenses as a way to build a client base, with the intention of making permanent licenses unattractive as soon as possible.

One nice thing about it are the continued updates.

I currently still use Creative Suite IV. It gives me all the fundamentals; but, there are some features on more recent versions that would be nice to have.

[Jim Noel]

Gimp takes a little learning, but it works.

[r.e.]

One thing to be aware of with Capture One is that its annual subscription cost is significantly higher than the cost of Adobe's US$10/month Photoshop/Lightroom subscription. I think that this is one reason why people are at pains to argue that Capture One is "better" than Photoshop. Capture One's higher cost has to be justified somehow. Having transferred from Adobe to Capture One a little over a year ago, I'm not sold on this argument. I just got fed up with Adobe's aggressive presence on my computer, was offered an extremely attractive price, as part of a monitor purchase, on a permanent Capture One license, and figured that I'd try out the competition. I think that Capture One is good, but I'm not bowled over by it; and when it comes to metadata and cataloguing, it's not in the same league as Bridge. I use Photo Mechanic as an image database, so the latter isn't a significant issue for me.

[sharktooth]

Adobe supports the latest 3 Mac operating systems. This means that the latest version of Creative Cloud, and Photoshop Elements need at least Mojave. You can still download an older Cloud version to run on older Macs, but you obviously won't get any of the newer features. It kinda defeats the point of having a yearly subscription service when you can't get the latest updates.

Photoshop Elements doesn't need a subscription, and is not too expensive. The trick is finding a version that will work on your Mac. I have Photoshop Elements 2020, and it does support High Sierra, but it may be hard to find that version in 2022.

I've been doing some experimenting with digital camera scanning of medium format negatives using multiple shots of small sections of the negative, and then stitching them together. This will work for large format too, and give you a very high resolution image.

Photoshop Elements has a very nice image stitching feature built in. You can also do the negative to positive conversion in Elements as well. It may not be as easy as a dedicated neg pos conversion software, but it is very powerful software if you take the time to figure out how to do it. Once you get the technique down it becomes very easy to do the conversion quickly.

The latest version of Gimp is another good choice, as others have suggested. Gimp is also free, so it's hard to complain about that. Gimp is also a very powerful tool, and it's not that difficult to do neg pos conversion, but it does require some self education. Some of the downsides to Gimp are that it doesn't have image stitching built in, and it doesn't support adjustment layers, or layer masks, whereas Elements does. Gimp does have layers and loads of adjustment features, however, but if you're addicted to Photoshop style layer masks and adjustment layers, then you might not be as comfortable with Gimp.

Another free option is Krita. It works on both Mac and Windows. It was created more as a painting program, but it does have a lot of Photoshop like features, including something similar to adjustment layers in Photoshop. I haven't used it enough to form an opinion, but it's nice to have options.

[Alan Klein]

Adobe supports the latest 3 Mac operating systems. This means that the latest version of Creative Cloud, and Photoshop Elements need at least Mojave. You can still download an older Cloud version to run on older Macs, but you obviously won't get any of the newer features. It kinda defeats the point of having a yearly subscription service when you can't get the latest updates.

Photoshop Elements doesn't need a subscription, and is not too expensive. The trick is finding a version that will work on your Mac. I have Photoshop Elements 2020, and it does support High Sierra, but it may be hard to find that version in 2022.

I've been doing some experimenting with digital camera scanning of medium format negatives using multiple shots of small sections of the negative, and then stitching them together. This will work for large format too, and give you a very high resolution image.

Photoshop Elements has a very nice image stitching feature built in. You can also do the negative to positive conversion in Elements as well. It may not be as easy as a dedicated neg pos conversion software, but it is very powerful software if you take the time to figure out how to do it. Once you get the technique down it becomes very easy to do the conversion quickly.

The latest version of Gimp is another good choice, as others have suggested. Gimp is also free, so it's hard to complain about that. Gimp is also a very powerful tool, and it's not that difficult to do neg pos conversion, but it does require some self education. Some of the downsides to Gimp are that it doesn't have image stitching built in, and it doesn't support adjustment layers, or layer masks, whereas Elements does. Gimp does have layers and loads of adjustment features, however, but if you're addicted to Photoshop style layer masks and adjustment layers, then you might not be as comfortable with Gimp.

Another free option is Krita. It works on both Mac and Windows. It was created more as a painting program, but it does have a lot of Photoshop like features, including something similar to adjustment layers in Photoshop. I haven't used it enough to form an opinion, but it's nice to have options.

How do you use Elements to get the right colors on negative color film like Ektar 100?

[sharktooth]

How do you use Elements to get the right colors on negative color film like Ektar 100?

Here's an oversimplified explanation, but it should give you the gist of what to do.

Negative film is inherently very low contrast, and it is intended to be used with high contrast printing paper to bring things back to a normal visual tonality. When you take a digital photo of your negative, you can convert it to a positive in Elements by going to Filter, Adjustments, then Invert. This will leave you with a very flat low contrast image with awful color balance, but both the contrast and color balance can easily be adjusted. This can be done by creating a new Adjustment Layer, Levels. The Levels adjustment controls the brightness range of red green and blue light and essentially controls the contrast of each color. In the simplest sense, If you know an area that should be pure black, and an area that should be pure white, you can pick these points with the eyedropper tool, and the software will do all the corrections for you. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple, but if you included a bit of the clear space between frames in your digital image, you'll now have a reference point for what should be pure black in the image. Getting a representative value at the other extreme is a little trickier, since you may not have anything in your image that represents a pure white. You could take a test photo with a white card to use for that value. With two points you should get something that looks much better, but will still need a bit further tweaking (as would any image).

Again, this is an extreme oversimplification, but if you're familiar with the Levels control in Elements it's not that difficult.

[PatrickMarq]

I would take a look at the website of Alex Burke, he has a ‘manual’ of how to inverse a color negative. It’s for photoshop but you can easy use it on any image edit tool that has layers and curves.
https://www.alexburkephoto.com/blog/2019/10/16/manual-inversion-of-color-negative-film

[xkaes]

With so many shutterbugs wanting to do this, one would think it would be built-in to software at this point. It has been built into scanners for decades, for Pete's Sake!

[Delfi_r]

VueScan (https://www.hamrick.com) can process raw files from a scanner or a digital camera (Tiff or DNG, even a JPG). No anual fee, and up to four computers and any number of scanners.

[sharktooth]

With so many shutterbugs wanting to do this, one would think it would be built-in to software at this point. It has been built into scanners for decades, for Pete's Sake!

Yes, that surprises me too. In the past, the scanner makers had to have this software or else they couldn't sell their scanners, but with "camera" scanning becoming popular over the last few years you'd think that Photoshop would have an update by now to do this easily. That being said, any type of simple conversion, including scanner software conversions, usually gets you to a half decent starting point, but will still need a lot of additional work to fine tune the finished result. You still need to learn how to use the tools properly and efficiently, and that takes time and commitment with whatever software you use. As with everything, there's no free lunch

[xkaes]

VueScan (https://www.hamrick.com) can process raw files from a scanner or a digital camera (Tiff or DNG, even a JPG). No anual fee, and up to four computers and any number of scanners.

I was unaware the VUESCAN can process (whatever that means) image files in addition to scanning. I never looked at it that deeply. Thanks for that tip.

[sharktooth]

Photoshop Elements has some distinct advantages, primarily low cost, and many useful features. Cost is usually around $100 (or less on sale). There is no subscription fee, so it works as long as your computer works. It has Adobe Camera Raw, so it can handle raw files as long as your camera is supported. It has built in image stitching capability, and several handy ease of use features, as well as many features similar to, or the same as in the full Photoshop. It obviously doesn't have all the full Photoshop feature set, but it is still surprisingly capable. For negative conversion, you need to use Levels, which is not anywhere near as nice as the Curves control in Photoshop, but it can still do the job. You also need to be aware of 16 bit and 8 bit functionality. 16 bit functionality is available on some Photoshop Elements features, but not all of them, so it may or may not cause a problem if you absolutely need 16 bit images.

[xkaes]

Anyone have any experience with C-41LAB?

https://sites.google.com/site/c41digitallab/

[Delfi_r]

Vuescan it's a two step scan software. You get a RAW scan that can be saved or directly processed as film negative or slide or as a document. The RAW file can be processed with another program (Photoshop for example) or with the second part that applies film data to convert the scan to a photographic image.

You can start your workflow making the RAW file with a Camera and use Vuescan and his presets, or the calibration data, to get a photographic image (positive from a negative scan or positive from a positive scan).

[Alan Klein]

Vuescan it's a two step scan software. You get a RAW scan that can be saved or directly processed as film negative or slide or as a document. The RAW file can be processed with another program (Photoshop for example) or with the second part that applies film data to convert the scan to a photographic image.

You can start your workflow making the RAW file with a Camera and use Vuescan and his presets, or the calibration data, to get a photographic image (positive from a negative scan or positive from a positive scan).

Does Vuescan set the black and white points before the scan or do you apply those afterward to the raw scan?

[j.e.simmons]

Member Ken Lee discusses scanning and setting black and whit points in Vuescan (and Eason)
https://www.kennethleegallery.com/html/scanning/index.php

Conversion in Capture One requires only checking an “enable black and white” box.

[Delfi_r]

Does Vuescan set the black and white points before the scan or do you apply those afterward to the raw scan?

If you select scan output to raw file the result is before any postprocessing (black and white points, BW negative, Color negative or Color positive). So you can use the Photoshop (or any other software) features with the raw scan, or you can process a batch of raw scans on Vuescan to produce the final image files.

[EBJohnson]

I use Capture One and Affinity Photo (Scans from VueScan), and have been experimenting with different ways of doing the inversions... It doesn't have to be all that difficult... and it seems to do better, to my eye, the fewer steps to the starting point... In either C1 or Affinity, do a WB to the mask and then invert (in C1 inverting the curves works, but then everything is backwards, which is a little frustrating)

The only issue is that Affinity will not always open the RAW DNGs in the raw processor... but that's not wholly necessary. Really as long as you do a WB and Invert, you're off to the races. With all other corrections after those two, it's pretty straight forward. I also, often but not always, do a per channel white/black, and a gamma, correction in Levels if needed. But those 2-3 steps get me 80-90% of the way there in most cases.

Alex Burkes method does an excellent job, but really seems to be too many steps. That's just my opnion though.

Affinity Photo is nearly a full PS replacement for... a tiny fraction of the cost... $50/license... I paid that 5yrs ago... That savings has made the occasional perpetual license update for C1 Pro cheaper, or at least similar to Adobe over time.

[wclark5179]

What about Photoshop Elements.

Two important ingredients with Photoshop are layers and blending. You can work with both with this program.

Check here:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/adobe-photoshop-elements-2022-android-mac-os-windows-apple-ios/6475124.p?skuId=6475124&ref=212&loc=1&extStoreId=611&ref=212&loc=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwve2TBhByEiwAaktM1MKC-t621SPRBHSdHSkHvaew6HGI6qyPGZnlaNBOEw8hN5Rl77B1URoCg_sQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Or here:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Photoshop%20Elements&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&ap=Y&gclid=CjwKCAjwve2TBhByEiwAaktM1J_I9KVtXm2tu676zfHDZ3JKp3RHNLKnkoxjuJn-jBm2J-gyZZQb-BoC8xoQAvD_BwE

[SergeyT]

Elements can't work with 16-bit per channel files

[rawitz]

Really as long as you do a WB and Invert, you're off to the races. With all other corrections after those two, it's pretty straight forward. I also, often but not always, do a per channel white/black, and a gamma, correction in Levels if needed. But those 2-3 steps get me 80-90% of the way there in most cases.

Alex Burkes method does an excellent job, but really seems to be too many steps. That's just my opnion though.

Thats the point! Its important to understand that the critical step, to set the correct Black and White point in your scan will not only optimise your scan but will simultaneously remove the color mask. And as the color mask is not like a flat color filter for your lens, these approaches to "first" remove the color mask flat and "then" to optimize your scan with BW adjustment and more, will be successful but you can set aside any of these steps removing color mask before, while and after setting BW points. Its not only complicating the process, you simply dont need it.

The raw scan approach is a functional way to solve the task, but you need 48bit raw scan (tiff or Ding or else) as the conversion and finetuning is a massive shift in color scale. Some time ago I did some post in a german LFsite how to do and convert color neg raw files.
First picture show the raw scan raw and converted.
Second pic shows the raw color corrected result.

227238

227239

In the picture of gradation work (PS) you see the masive work to get the correct picture out of the rawscan.

regards
Rainer

The german link:
https://forum.grossformatfotografie.de/forum/thread/19634-colornegativ-scan-mit-epson-software/

[Alan Klein]

Thats the point! Its important to understand that the critical step, to set the correct Black and White point in your scan will not only optimise your scan but will simultaneously remove the color mask. And as the color mask is not like a flat color filter for your lens, these approaches to "first" remove the color mask flat and "then" to optimize your scan with BW adjustment and more, will be successful but you can set aside any of these steps removing color mask before, while and after setting BW points. Its not only complicating the process, you simply dont need it.

The raw scan approach is a functional way to solve the task, but you need 48bit raw scan (tiff or Ding or else) as the conversion and finetuning is a massive shift in color scale. Some time ago I did some post in a german LFsite how to do and convert color neg raw files.
First picture show the raw scan raw and converted.
Second pic shows the raw color corrected result.

227238

227239

In the picture of gradation work (PS) you see the masive work to get the correct picture out of the rawscan.

regards
Rainer

The german link:
https://forum.grossformatfotografie.de/forum/thread/19634-colornegativ-scan-mit-epson-software/

The final colors seem a little undersaturated but that should be an easy adjustment.

[SergeyT]

Try to apply your method to an image with just green leaves, grass, etc or a still lake with reflected cloudless sky or any other image where there is no anything close to white and neutral gray...How would you set White point and mid-tones , by eye ?
Will you be able to achieve the same colors by applying this method to the same scan after a week from the first conversion without memorizing or writing down the curves values?

[rawitz]

You can save the complex gradation settings like above in one file in PS and you have a perfect 1-click-preset for CN-conversion and optimization, "without memorizing or writing down the curves values". Whats wrong with it?

If you follow the steps of my presentation, just make or take a CN-pic with high contrast, with sunny whites and shadowed blacks, and some middlegreys too. From a rawscan or a slide-scan then make gradation correction in conversion, BW-point, contrast and color and save it as your personal preset. As CN-film is physically very soft, a color-saturation of 20-30%+ is my final step.

BTW: Even a single unknown CNeg just with green-grass and blue-sky is handable: With the unexposed filmborder you can define the Blackpoint (nothing else than you do extracting the mask) and calculate the black color points values to the white point values approximatly. But this is an academical diskussion ...
My reverse question: How will you extract the mask, if there is no filmborder at all?

regards
Rainer

[SergeyT]

In my opinion, each scan must contain unexposed film borders. Such areas will make for true Dark point.
White point and neutral Gray is always a challenge if the scanned image does not contain such colors in it. But there must be a formula that allows to reliably calculate the proper values for each of these just based on the value of exposed area. It is done when printed optically and it is repeatable, hence there must be formula for each emulsion, exposure (under, normal, over) and development (push, normal, pull) combo.
From my countless experiments with scans of color negatives in PS, I have a feeling that RGB curves when used to set Dark and White points wreck highlights.
LAB might be a more suitable color space for the conversion. At least in PS.

[Alan Klein]

In my opinion, each scan must contain unexposed film borders. Such areas will make for true Dark point.
White point and neutral Gray is always a challenge if the scanned image does not contain such colors in it. But there must be a formula that allows to reliably calculate the proper values for each of these just based on the value of exposed area. It is done when printed optically and it is repeatable, hence there must be formula for each emulsion, exposure (under, normal, over) and development (push, normal, pull) combo.
From my countless experiments with scans of color negatives in PS, I have a feeling that RGB curves when used to set Dark and White points wreck highlights.
LAB might be a more suitable color space for the conversion. At least in PS.

What about using Levels?

[Alan Klein]

Can anyone explain in simple terms in 25 words or less the orange mask's purpose and why it creates problems when scanning?

[wclark5179]

Some info:

(It’s more than twenty five words, but worth the read!)

http://www.brianpritchard.com/why_colour_negative_is_orange.htm

[Alan Klein]

Thanks, a little complicated. I found this explanation of why scanners are better wth orange masks than shooting them with a digital camera. Can anyone explain how a scanner does the following (bolded) from the article?

Color negatives are a special problem to remove the orange mask. Film scanners scan color negatives with a longer exposure time of the blue and green channels. This acts as an analog glass filter at the lens, and the longer exposure boosts the blue and green components and reduces the orange (as an analog operation, similar to a glass filter). Otherwise, if not filtered, then when inverted, the color negative mask appears near deep blue (the complement of light orange) instead of the correct colors.
https://www.scantips.com/colornegs.html

[wclark5179]

I did find this source of information:

https://www.scantips.com/colornegs.html

Decades ago, I printed color slides using a Unicolor drum. Then I would print client selected slides to make a wedding album. I would usually have them over.to my home for a fondue party and slide show! This was the 70’s. Looking.back it was really a pita.

I have a color analyzer to use with my Omega enlarger.

I did some C-41 processing but mostly had all this done by a lab for me. I was too busy! And, quite frankly, I’m using my creative skills and energy at a high level with photoshop. Monte Zucker and Eddie Tapp really sparked my brain learning about this program. It’s really quite simple.

So my knowledge on processing color film is limited. Thank goodness!

Since I’m a nerd with this, when photography went digital, I understood it and loved it. Why, now, I could sell and have made very large enlargements. My largest sale was a 50” by 40” print. Fantastic.

So I hope you get your arms around this subject. Do you process your own materials with your own darkroom?

At any rate, keep google searching. I’m doing some now that you peaked my interest!

I had a large store of Kodak color paper (up to 16x20) and Kodak chemicals that I gave away.

If folks are interested, I could write several chapters on people photography. My avitar was made sometime ago in Sarasota Florida by a gent named Monte Zucker. He was my coach and friend.

If I’m not committing a sin here, my belief is digital is the only way to go. Sorry!

[rawitz]

Thanks, a little complicated. I found this explanation of why scanners are better wth orange masks than shooting them with a digital camera. Can anyone explain how a scanner does the following (bolded) from the article?

Color negatives are a special problem to remove the orange mask. Film scanners scan color negatives with a longer exposure time of the blue and green channels. This acts as an analog glass filter at the lens, and the longer exposure boosts the blue and green components and reduces the orange (as an analog operation, similar to a glass filter). Otherwise, if not filtered, then when inverted, the color negative mask appears near deep blue (the complement of light orange) instead of the correct colors.
https://www.scantips.com/colornegs.html

Hm, a filmscanner varying exposure times of different colors is quite false and the rest of that post too.
I´m sorry but I have to remind what a scanner does. If a scanner (like the Epson 700/800s) has the technical specs of density 4D and 16bit/channel recording, this means: the scanner has a brightness latitude 1:10000 (=4D) which is about 13 f-stops, and within this value the brightness is scaled in about 65000 steps (16bit) from black to white, for each (!) color RGB.
After calibrating the lightsource (brightness and color of the lamp) the scanner makes a scan of the picture within his complete brightness room and renders this to 16bit, no matter you have a BW, Colorslide, oder Colorneg on the scanner, and no matter of your manual or auto adjstments in BW-Points, Brighness and Colors and else.
All this is the second step made not by the scanner, but by computing of the scanner software. This first step is the famous rawscan and as it is completely untouched, there cannot be any wrong adjustments (but also not any right). The scanning with all the three or six scanning rows for each colour is one single step, inherent is no technical possibility to vary exposure or filtering one color separately.
You can verify or falsify my statement: If the time of the raw scanning (when you hear scanner-motor working) is the same despite varying brighness, color balance or color reversal, but scanning time is varying setting dpi much higher (from 2400 to 6400) or lower, that will prove my theory.

Short results:
Extracting a CN rawscan is not faulty, but a correct way to digitize CN-Film.
Extracting the mask can be done within the scanning software, or also later in PS.
Pretuning the scan in scanning software and finetuning later in PS is quite right (this is my way).
Digitizing NC via a Camera is possible with the correct technical equipment and workflow

regards
Rainer

[Alan Klein]

Hm, a filmscanner varying exposure times of different colors is quite false and the rest of that post too.
I´m sorry but I have to remind what a scanner does. If a scanner (like the Epson 700/800s) has the technical specs of density 4D and 16bit/channel recording, this means: the scanner has a brightness latitude 1:1000 (=4D) which is about 10 f-stops, and within this value the brightness is scaled in about 65000 steps (16bit) from black to white, for each (!) color RGB.
After calibrating the lightsource (brightness and color of the lamp) the scanner makes a scan of the picture within his complete brightness room and renders this to 16bit, no matter you have a BW, Colorslide, oder Colorneg on the scanner, and no matter of your manual or auto adjstments in BW-Points, Brighness and Colors and else.
All this is the second step made not by the scanner, but by computing of the scanner software. This first step is the famous rawscan and as it is completely untouched, there cannot be any wrong adjustments (but also not any right). The scanning with all the three or six scanning rows for each colour is one single step, inherent is no technical possibility to vary exposure or filtering one color separately.
You can verify or falsify my statement: If the time of the raw scanning (when you hear scanner-motor working) is the same despite varying brighness, color balance or color reversal, but scanning time is varying setting dpi much higher (from 2400 to 6400) or lower, that will prove my theory.

Short results:
Extracting a CN rawscan is not faulty, but a correct way to digitize CN-Film.
Extracting the mask can be done within the scanning software, or also later in PS.
Pretuning the scan in scanning software and finetuning later in PS is quite right (this is my way).
Digitizing NC via a Camera is possible with the correct technical equipment and workflow

regards
Rainer

Rainer, MAybe you can clarify something that I haven't been able too. Some people have said you ought to set the white and black points before the scan by setting them on the scanner's prescan histogram where the picture data starts and ends. The alternative is to scan "flat" 0-255 and adjust these points (levels) in post editing program. The former gives you more data to work with.

I've tried it both ways and I haven't seen a difference in data quantity or type between the two methods. What is the reality of these methods? (i'm not referring to negative film vs chromes but this question applies to both types of films.)

Also, what do you mean by "pretuning"?

[rawitz]

Rainer, MAybe you can clarify something that I haven't been able too. Some people have said you ought to set the white and black points before the scan by setting them on the scanner's prescan histogram where the picture data starts and ends. The alternative is to scan "flat" 0-255 and adjust these points (levels) in post editing program. The former gives you more data to work with.

I've tried it both ways and I haven't seen a difference in data quantity or type between the two methods. What is the reality of these methods? (i'm not referring to negative film vs chromes but this question applies to both types of films.)

Also, what do you mean by "pretuning"?

I start to answer your question from an unexspected side. As said above the scanner can only work within his absolute working-room of (here) 4d and 16bit. Its a common error to think by setting special BW-Points and narrowing the histogramm, its possible to get a enhanced 16-rawscan of the narrowed space. No! No matter of your presets in software
1.first there is the rawscan over the full technical 4d space with 16bit.
2.the software adjustment step will then (!) cut out your selected picture-space of the rawscan, and so you will cut-off and loose bit-values in the unused space. Its the software, that recalculates the (from raw) reduced Bit-Space in your now upscaled 48bit output. Exept of rawscan so you never get a (scan)native 48bit pic for output.
And Alan, this means, you loose native colorspace in your presetting the scan in scanning-software (no matter your output setting). Or your rawscan is native 16bit but while tuning in software later, its THE SAME LOSS" if you result in the same final picture. And because all this pre- while- and after-tuning doesnt make any difference if you have the same final pic, my personal way in scanning BW,Slide and CN is:
Pretune within the scanning software by setting BW-Points with "some room" to the left and right of the histogramm, also the brightness and color-setting, and while finetuning later in PS I will never have BW- or colorspace cutoff, thats a complete ruin of your work.

regards
Rainer

[Alan Klein]

I start to answer your question from an unexspected side. As said above the scanner can only work within his absolute working-room of (here) 4d and 16bit. Its a common error to think by setting special BW-Points and narrowing the histogramm, its possible to get a double 16-rawscan. No - no matter of your presets in software
1.first there is the rawscan over the full technical 4d space with 16bit.
2.the software adjustment step will then (!) cut out your selected picture-space of the rawscan, and so you will cut-off and loose bit-values in the unused space. Its the software, that recalculates the (from raw) reduced Bit-Space in your now upscaled 48bit output. Exept of rawscan so you never get a (scan)native 48bit pic for output.
And Alan, this means, you loose native colorspace in your presetting the scan in scanning-software (no matter your output setting). Or your rawscan is native 16bit but while tuning in software later, its THE SAME LOSS" if you result in the same final picture. And because all this pre- while- and after-tuning doesnt make any difference if you have the same final pic, my personal way in scanning BW,Slide and CN is:
Pretune within the scanning software by setting BW-Points with "some room" to the left and right of the histogramm, also the brightness and color-setting, and while finetuning later in PS I will never have BW- or colorspace cutoff, thats a complete ruin of your work.

regards
Rainer

It's not totally clear. Do you get more workable data setting the histogram before the scan or not?

[rawitz]

It's not totally clear. Do you get more workable data setting the histogram before the scan or not?

No!
The scanner scans native 16bit only within its native space of brightness. If you narrow this space by histogramm settings, the scanner will NOT scan this narrow space with 16bit, but scans the whole (!) space with 16bit and then the software cuts out of this native raw space the preset space, so it also cuts off bit-values of the now unused black and white space. The software output of 16bit files is not native 16bit scanning, but cutoff-bitspace and upscaling the cutoff-bitspace to new 16bit-file.
I speak from native data as workable data, or what you mean?

[martiansea]

I use Capture One and Affinity Photo (Scans from VueScan)...

Affinity Photo is nearly a full PS replacement for... a tiny fraction of the cost... $50/license... I paid that 5yrs ago... That savings has made the occasional perpetual license update for C1 Pro cheaper, or at least similar to Adobe over time.
Same here! I have completely replaced everything I used to do with Adobe with the Affinity suite and I am very satisfied with the results and I've come to prefer Affinity over Adobe, not just tolerate it. Instead of Capture One, I'm using DxO PhotoLab, and love it. I'll never go back to Adobe for anything.

Note to anyone interested: Affinity is compatible with Photoshop plugins, so maybe a favorite PS color correction tool can be used there. I personally use Nik collection.

Another thing folks may consider playing with for negative color correction is Hasselblad FlexColor. I feel a little silly recommending this because it's outdated and it looks like they're never going to update it, but it still runs OK in Win10 and it's freeware. I have it installed to use for processing 3F files I get from Imacon scanners. I haven't tried using it yet for processing other format scans, but I'll give it a shot with a color film negative image I "scanned" with my Nikon D800 and see if it actually works.

[martiansea]

Anyone have any experience with C-41LAB?

https://sites.google.com/site/c41digitallab/

I'm trying this now. Thanks for sharing the link!

[EBJohnson]

Same here! I have completely replaced everything I used to do with Adobe with the Affinity suite and I am very satisfied with the results and I've come to prefer Affinity over Adobe, not just tolerate it. Instead of Capture One, I'm using DxO PhotoLab, and love it. I'll never go back to Adobe for anything.

Note to anyone interested: Affinity is compatible with Photoshop plugins, so maybe a favorite PS color correction tool can be used there. I personally use Nik collection.

Another thing folks may consider playing with for negative color correction is Hasselblad FlexColor. I feel a little silly recommending this because it's outdated and it looks like they're never going to update it, but it still runs OK in Win10 and it's freeware. I have it installed to use for processing 3F files I get from Imacon scanners. I haven't tried using it yet for processing other format scans, but I'll give it a shot with a color film negative image I "scanned" with my Nikon D800 and see if it actually works.

I tried DXO and I had too many issues with my TIFFs loading. C1 is pretty great and since it's my only software cost, and I usually skip every other version, I'm not TOO concerned with the cost... I've been using Affinity since it was in Beta and in the course of the the almost 10yrs I've been using it have only had minor issues. It's really a fantastic piece of software, and that goes for all three apps.

[martiansea]

OK, I just tried C41 Lab. It works pretty well, though I personally find the command prompt interface very painful to use.
Comparing the results to what I got manually subtracting the film base and processing in Affinity, it looks similar though not exactly the same. I think its auto white balancing, or whatever is happening with that, explains the slight difference in hue. Hard for me to say which is "better," though if I had a large batch to do, it would likely be easier to batch process with C41 Lab (though that would likely require me having to spend time figuring out how to tell command line to do this because I'm not savvy with that at all). Someone needs to make a simple GUI for it.

[Alan Klein]

No!
The scanner scans native 16bit only within its native space of brightness. If you narrow this space by histogramm settings, the scanner will NOT scan this narrow space with 16bit, but scans the whole (!) space with 16bit and then the software cuts out of this native raw space the preset space, so it also cuts off bit-values of the now unused black and white space. The software output of 16bit files is not native 16bit scanning, but cutoff-bitspace and upscaling the cutoff-bitspace to new 16bit-file.
I speak from native data as workable data, or what you mean?
OK So I can scan flat with no adjustments including black and white points (levels). So when I open the flat scan in Lightroom, which sliders do I use to duplicate the adjustments to the histogram that I could have done in the scanner?

[rawitz]

OK So I can scan flat with no adjustments including black and white points (levels). So when I open the flat scan in Lightroom, which sliders do I use to duplicate the adjustments to the histogram that I could have done in the scanner?

I dont use LR, but for the next steps BW-points, brightness and gamma, color correction its common to use in PS the histogramm tool (image/adjustment/levels) and then in gradation tool set the contrast curve. I do everything in the gradation tool, as there are different equivalent ways ...Final step is color saturation.

If you scan flat with no adjustments at all, in theory you made your own rawscan output - "raw" inverted for BW and CN, not for slides. You get a very flat picture but with 48bit output you can workout a final perfect picture, just as with the steps discussued here for CNscans after inversion.
But there is a restriction: no adjustment by you does not garantee a real raw output picture, because every software always makes "things in the background" we dont know and cannot switch off.

[SergeyT]

What about using Levels?

Same thing as Curves but with limited flexibility.

[Alan Klein]

Same thing as Curves but with limited flexibility.

I thought the Black and White slider might be the same as adjusting Levels similar to black and white points on the histogram adjustment in Epsonscan??? How do you do that with Curves?

[sharktooth]

Affinity Photo is now on sale at 50% off (don't know for how long). I tried a trial version earlier, but decided to get it when it became 50% off ($40 Canadian, less in US$). It works well for color negative conversion. It has some advantages over Photoshop Elements, in that it has curves, whereas Elements does not. For Elements you have to use the levels function to do the color corrections. One disadvantage of Affinity Photo is that it doesn't have black and white point pickers, so it's not quite as easy to do the black point correction to the film edges. It does have a very effective panorama stitching feature built in. In terms of overall functionality it is much closer to the full Photoshop than to Elements. It has both Windows and Mac versions, but you have to select one or the other. You can, however, install it on more than one of your own personal computers (so it says in the licensing agreement, but haven't confirmed myself).

I would say that this seems to be a pretty effective tool that's about as cheap as you can get. If you're already have some familiarity with Photoshop then it's probably a great low cost option for a hobbyist. It's NOT "one click and you're done" though, so you do need to make some commitment to learn how to use it.

[martiansea]

One disadvantage of Affinity Photo is that it doesn't have black and white point pickers, so it's not quite as easy to do the black point correction to the film edges.
If you hold down the ALT key while adjusting the black and white sliders in the Levels function, the screen will go into "threshold" view so you can see exactly where the blackest and whitest points appear.
I used to do this thing with Threshold in Photoshop where I would find those points with Threshold, mark them, and then use the black and white pickers on those spots in Levels. The way Affinity handles this, as I just described, does away with that step completely.

[sharktooth]

If you hold down the ALT key while adjusting the black and white sliders in the Levels function, the screen will go into "threshold" view so you can see exactly where the blackest and whitest points appear.
I used to do this thing with Threshold in Photoshop where I would find those points with Threshold, mark them, and then use the black and white pickers on those spots in Levels. The way Affinity handles this, as I just described, does away with that step completely.

Thanks, martiansea, I've been experimenting with negative conversion in Affinity today, and trying to figure out how to do things. I just tried the ALT key with the black and white sliders in Levels, and it works nicely to isolate the darkest and lightest areas. In term of the darkest area, I already know that's going to be the edge of the film outside the image area. In Photoshop, you can use the black picker to select the black point at the film edge, and then Photoshop will automatically correct the RGB colors at the black point. Affinity doesn't have a black point picker, so I made a sample target at the film edge, and watched the RGB levels in the Info area to see when they went to 0 when I adjusted the RGB curves. It's easy enough to do, but it's still easier with Photoshop or Elements. The white point is not easy with any software if you don't have something that's pure white in your scene. I've been using a white cloud for reference, and trimming the RGB curves so that they have the same output there. I can use the same white point trim values for other shots on the same negative film type. Once you have decent black and white point corrections set, you'll have a good starting point for further color correction to taste.

So far I've been pretty impressed with Affinity, especially considering the price. If you're doing digicam stitching of large format images, this can be done very easily with the panorama stitching function in Affinity. The panorama stitching in Affinity is even easier than in Elements, so that's a real bonus in my books. Gimp is another great tool, and it's free, but it doesn't have a panorama stitching function, and it doesn't have adjustment layers yet.

[martiansea]

Now that I've started experimenting with TRICOLOR PHOTOGRAPHY (http://https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?48583-Color-photography-with-black-and-white-film&p=1641615&viewfull=1#post1641615), I found Affinity's auto layering features to be extremely helpful and big time-saver. It was able to aligned 4 different negatives very quickly and accurately. I've tried using the pano stitching for putting together huge images from large negatives that I DSLR macro scanned at 1:1 size, and it turned out, but I still feel like I'm in the process of finding my way through that to get a solid workflow. But it did work well, just a little finnicky if I wanted to do little adjustments to how it stitched.

Gimp recently updated the Curves function to allow you to directly type in coordinates for curve points, the same as how PS does. This makes it the only app with curves outside of PS that allows you to do this. It was one of the things that disappointed me about Affinity. Being able to type in curve coordinates is crucial to being able to use THIS PROCESS (https://www.freestylephoto.biz/alternative-process/making-digital-negatives) for making correction curves. But, I have since started using http://www.easydigitalnegatives.com/ which has been giving me better results and the correction curves can be saved as LUTs, which Affinity has no trouble using. So, while I was excited to finally see Gimp has improved Curves, I'm still sticking with Affinity because the LUTs for correction seem like a better way to go.
Also, I was able to save my old Photoshop curves as LUTs to use in Affinity! Open up the old PS file with the curves layer in Affinity, and Affinity will recognize the original settings of the curve, then it's no big deal to just save that curve setting as an LUT. It's really cool.

[sharktooth]

That's interesting. I didn't know what LUT was, so did a Google. It's a look up table. It sounds like you can save your curves in a look up table to use with other images. Is that correct? I'll have to try it. If it works it would definitely be a huge time saver to optimize images from the same negative stock.

[martiansea]

You can save all kinds of things as Look Up Tables, not just curves. I also save color-related things. Outside of photo editing, LUTs are what your video card uses for setting the screen colors, etc etc etc...so many things are done with LUTs

[sharktooth]

You can save all kinds of things as Look Up Tables, not just curves. I also save color-related things. Outside of photo editing, LUTs are what your video card uses for setting the screen colors, etc etc etc...so many things are done with LUTs

That's amazing! I just tried saving an LUT from an image that had multiple adjustments, and then reloaded the original image and applied the LUT. This will be a real advantage for Digicam scanning of large format negs since you can now do all the post processing by applying one LUT. That's about as close to one click as you can get. Once you get color correction and contrast to something you really like, it will be very easy to save that LUT so you can easily apply those same corrections to other images without any fuss or bother. Similarly, you could make an LUT for a badly overexposed image or underexposed image to get you to a good starting point quickly. As you say, the possibilities are endless.

I'm very glad you pointed this out, since I had no idea what an LUT was. Thanks so much! Does Photoshop have this feature as well?

[sharktooth]

Gimp recently updated the Curves function to allow you to directly type in coordinates for curve points, the same as how PS does. This makes it the only app with curves outside of PS that allows you to do this. It was one of the things that disappointed me about Affinity. Being able to type in curve coordinates is crucial to being able to use THIS PROCESS (https://www.freestylephoto.biz/alternative-process/making-digital-negatives) for making correction curves.

The latest version of Affinity I've been playing with does allow you to enter curve coordinates. It has X and Y boxes that you can enter values in. The scale is 0 to 1 by default, but you can change it to 0 to 100 to be like a percentage. Since I'm new to Affinity I don't know if this is a recent update or if it's always been like this. The downside is that the scale used in the curves function is different from the scale used for color info (0 to 255), which is indeed very strange.

[martiansea]

The latest version of Affinity I've been playing with does allow you to enter curve coordinates. It has X and Y boxes that you can enter values in. The scale is 0 to 1 by default, but you can change it to 0 to 100 to be like a percentage. Since I'm new to Affinity I don't know if this is a recent update or if it's always been like this. The downside is that the scale used in the curves function is different from the scale used for color info (0 to 255), which is indeed very strange.

Ah, I didn't realize you could change the scale of the coordinates on the curve. I saw you could type them in manually, but since the scale didn't match up with the step table I use for calibration, I figured it was useless.
I'm fairly sure Photoshop can do things with LUTs too, but I never tried, so I don't know where that would be found.

I hope more film and alternative photo people start using Affinity so we can start building up a good knowledge base of how to do things. All the info out there now is PS-centric, and while Affinity does many things the same way, it's those little differences that can cause a headache. And I'm also very interested to find out if there are functions and workflows within Affinity that might make it the preferred app for this kind of photo work.

[sharktooth]

Ah, I didn't realize you could change the scale of the coordinates on the curve. I saw you could type them in manually, but since the scale didn't match up with the step table I use for calibration, I figured it was useless.
I'm fairly sure Photoshop can do things with LUTs too, but I never tried, so I don't know where that would be found.


The scale range adjustment is to the right of the XY boxes. They just say Min and Max, so it's not at all intuitive that these are to adjust the scale. It looks like Photoshop can use LUTs, and there is a folder in the main application folder to store them. I've been finding that there is a lot of good info about Affinity on the web, including some YouTube posters with tutorials.

I'm glad to hear you had success with alignment of color separation negatives, and that's something I want to try out too, since I've got a few of these I did years ago. It would also be good for focus stacking.

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