Scanning Negatives as Positives

With some flatbeds with lower dynamic range; the gamit of "Scanning Negatives as Positives" helps gain better detail; for troublesome negatives; miss-exposed. Here we first did this with out old 600dpi flatbed; that cost about a grand when new; and was state of the art. A seminar we went to about 8 years ago mentioned this idea; it is worth a try even with todays better scanners. Sometimes the software allows a better prescan with this method; and one gets a better image. Here we have about 8 scanners; some old some real new. I mentioned this method once to a Shutterbug Magazine editor; and even supplied examples; and got a response "that it doesnt help at all; in their own tests" . Maybe their advertisers dont want folks to know how to pull better performance out of an older scanner!

Don't know why it works, but I read an artical by a gentleman reviewing Silverfast for the Epson 2450 and he recommended that technique. I found, just by emperical testing, that I did get sharper scans in many situations on the Epson but sometimes didn't make any difference. Here's the link to the artical, it is mostly about silverscan with the Epson 2450, but has some discussion of the inverting technique. Good luck!

http://www.virtualtraveller.org/silverfast/silverfast.htm

It's an antiquated technique, rendered obsolete by recent scanning software. Scanning negatives requires more processing than positives. The benefit, so to speak, of scanning as a positive is to circumvent automated processing and doing it yourself. I prefer to let Vuescan do the work because it adjusts the exposure to cancel the orange mask, resulting in a better histogram than merely manipulating the gamma after the fact: http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc11.htm

You might like to read my Scanhancer 5LE manual. It is not so much about the Scanhancer but it is mainly about scanning as positive and inverting in Photoshop, so it should be helpful, whatever scanner you are using. You'll find the link to the PDF file in the Downloads section of the Scanhancer website (see link in my signature).

But the image scanned as a positive has much more vibrant colors, including colors present in the original scene,

The image on the right also has no shadow detail while the image on the left has lots of shaw detail in the rocks, and I consider the extra saturation to be nothing but the result of a distorted profile. Essentially if you look at both images you'll see that the image on the right is nothing more than a flipped profile curve. Note the lack of highlight detail in the image on the left that further proves this, but even my Epson 1640 flatbed allows me to adjust highlight exposure.

If you need more saturation, add it in Photoshop.

If your scanner requires you to scan as negs as slides, then your scanner has screwed up film profiles. The only real difficulty with scanning color negs is the orange mask, which most new scanners know how to compensate for.

Also note the sky in the extreme upper left on the neg scan is baby blue, while it's grey in the slide scan. What was that about more vibrant color again?

There's a good tutorial on scanning color negatives as positives on Ian Lyons' www.computer-darkroom.com site. I suggest following his technique for correcting the 3 channels, rather than using auto-levels. It's not an archaic technique - it prevents blown-out highlights & works as well (at least in my experiments) as 2d party software.

I think the biggest issue with this flavour of discussion is a frequent expectation for the output of a scanner to immediately be a *good* image.

Out of the scanner, good scans rarely equate to a *good* image - and Ive never had one yet nor really want one. Just focus on capturing the most information.

Post scan correct/process in the usual software options; and as an observation, avoid *auto* anything options in PS, learn what youre doing and why - "cookie cutter image processing' wont deliver great results.

Kirk, isn't Ian Lyon's technique for setting the points (IF you get in spot on) identical to the output if you do auto levels with 0 wp and bp?

Scott, I disagree about the shadow detail. There is just as much detail, or darn near, in the version scanned as a positive. There's definitely more highlight detail, which is why I'm experimenting with this in the first place. I have a LS-30, and I am not clear on whether it's the NikonScan software or the hardware itself, but it has a bad habit of clipping highlights. (I lust after VueScan, but it's hard to justify when I only paid $100 for the scanner, and it's already a huge step up from what I was using before.)

Again, negative on the left, positive on the right. Being a JPG probably doesn't help, but I think most of the "detail" in the neg version is noise.

I found this thread because I was looking for a way to scan some negatives with my microtek x6 flatbed and dont' want to wait until I can get their attachment.

It sounds like you can just scan and invert but I can't get it to work. I get the orangeness that one of the answerers mentioned and that just inverts to a dark color.

If this is possible, could someone give me simple step by step instructions. I'm sorry for bringing down the level of the discussion.

I use Ulead Photoimpact but I assume it has the basic features that photoshop has.

Thanks for any help,

Robert Karen