Scanning Negatives using flatbed scanner

If you had done the requested search before posting this question you would have found the thread "Scanning color negatives in photoshop". The question asked there is the same as the one you ask here.

Thanks for responding Rob. I did the search and most importantly I read the whole thread. There was no direct answer there, possibly because the original poster neglected to include her type of scanner.

So I am reasking the question, and I am including the necessary information in my request (ie. what type of scanner I'm using, my unfamiliarity with Photoshop and my objective).

Rather than adjusting levels, try Image->Adjust->Variations. This works in a similar fashion to the way CC filters work. If your image is too blue, kick in a little yellow (anti-blue).

First, though, I'd check my scanning software to make sure it was compensating for the base color of the negative. Sounds like it's doing a direct scan, and then inverting the image. Most scanner software knows about the base color when in negative mode.

Best of luck,

Tom

I have tried and tried to scan negatives with my Relisys Taurus + TMA and have NEVER gotten a good color balance despite many attempts at adjusting the color balance.

If your scanning software does not have a routine for converting a color negative scan, ( mine does not ) you will have EXTREME difficulty getting a usable scan.

I tried all of the suggested tricks listed in Photo.net with poor results every time.

This scanner does a wonderful job scanning positive transparencies by the way....

Good luck, Don

Color negatives are very tricky (as it seems everyone has discovered). The problem was explained to me by a Kodak guy (I think it was Dave McDowell) a while back: It turns out the density of the base is not constant, in fact being a function of the emulsion density. Thus, you can't simply apply a constant correction to remove the effect of the orange base coating. Scanner mfrs making devices specifically for scanning negative film have to develop very sophisticated lookup tables to correct for varying base density. Bottom line, there's just about no way to do it yourself, if the scanner mfr hasn't already done it for you. Best advice is to go ahead and buy a dedicated film scanner if you're going to do a lot of this work, or use PhotoCD if your volume is lower. (BTW, there are some excellent little film scanners coming on the market now, with suprisingly good performance for the money: Check out the Minolta Dimage Scan and the new Olympus IS-10. - The IS-10 is lower resolution, but will easily produce a scan good for up to ~8x10 enlargement, and only costs $449(!) I don't know in detail how the quality is though, as I haven't personally run film through it, only seen it demo'd at a trade show, with mfr-supplied negatives.)

The Olympus IS-10 is a 35mm camera. I believe the new 35mm film scanner is the ES-10.

Printing negatives and getting good color reproductions on photo paper (I have 10 years of experience working in a photo lab) is not much different from scanning negatives and tring to get a good RGB display. The photo labs use equipment valued at $200,000.00, and in spite of that it is a tricky operation given the 100's if not 1000's of film emulsions. We calibrate the equipment daily for dozens of emulsions, and it almost always comes down to a visual adjustment.

I believe that getting a good scan from a negative is nearly impossible, unless you control the type of negative and how that negative was developed. I have used a $2000.00 microtek scanner to get excellent scans of photographs. I would get my negatives printed at a lab(15 to 39 cents each) and then I would scan those.

For people who may be interested in this, apparently Cytopia Software does make a plugin for Photoshop that will compensate for the orange cast in the negative. I have not tried it yet (demo at their website), but it is part of their PhotoOptics Digital Filter series.

When you have scanned your negative save it and use adobe program. open the file select you photo go to adjust quality and take the saturation level to right to the right and you will find all the blue cast disappears. I use a program called Futuris which you can get from the internet. I save the image and use microsoft photo editer to convert and rotate the print.

I had my body scanned in an MRI scanner, now I'm trying to use a scanjet to scan the plastic MRI "Negative" If I used a Lamp to shine it above, I can get a decent image. I need one of those lighted walls the doctors use to view the MRI negatives. The lamp is not strong enough to cover the entire image. You would think a mirror covering the scanner would reflect the available light back. I don't have a transperancy adapter.

I came upon this by accident after struggling with dark orange scans of some negatives from the 1960s. Before inverting, I kicked the saturation up +100 and the hue over +35. That reduced the orange to something like an acceptable golden yellow. Then, when I inverted, the image wasn't a totally washed out light blue. See the link below for the steps. I'm sure somebody else could do better, but this was my first try at this.

http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~jlgordon/scanned-neg.html

Jay

OK first of all what you are trying to achieve is very tricky. I almost never scan colour negs as the results are poor. Colour neg is an intermediate stage and has an orange mask. If you want good quality scans you need to scan from the final stage, ie. prints.

However if for some reason you still want to scan the negs here is a technique I discovered in a Photoshop book. I would give credit to the author but I can't recall the title.

Anyway...

1. scan neg, including some film rebate. 2. In Photoshop take a 3x3 colour sample of the rebate (orange bit). 3. Create a new layer, fill it with the sampled colour, and invert. 4. Change opacity to 50% & blending mode to colour.

This will neutralise the orange mask. Now...

5. Add an "Invert" adjustment layer. 6. Add a levels adjustment layer to fix up contrast etc. 7. Add a Hue/Saturation layer to boost the saturation. 8. Tweak your adjustment layers and flatten.

You should now have a reasonable positive image (but still no match to a pro scan from a good print).

One other tip when scanning negs: If your scanner supports more than 8 bits per channel, use it. You often have to do radical levels adjustments that result in big gaps in the histogram and therefore posterization. If your image is scanned at more than 8 bits per channel, then converted to 8 bits per channel *after* you've applied all the levels adjustments you will notice the histogram has few if any gaps in it, which means smoother tonal transitions.

Hope this helps. Cheers, Dave.