The Moderator suggested I start this thread with this post I placed in another thread. When I scanned old film, I didn't realize I was suppose to have a problem with negative masks. I guess ignorance is bliss. I scanned old film using my Epson V600 flat bed and just used Levels mainly in Elements in PP and a few other adjustments to bring the colors and brightness back. I set the scanner on negative for negatives and positive for positive film using the Epson scanner program with only ICE, 2400 and 24 bit. No other scan settings. What's this thing with the mask that I've been reading? I don't see it. I scanned old negatives: Fuji SHG 100, Agfa Optima , Ektar 25, as well as a lot of transparencies (Velvia 50) - you can see on my gallery below. Do you see a problem I'm missing. I'm getting ready to start shooting medium format film again with Portra 160vc and 160nc. Is there something I should be expecting to do when I get to scan these negatives or should I just stay "ignorant"? Thanks and Happy New Year everyone. Alan.

Hi Allan

happy new year


When I scanned old film, I didn't realize I was suppose to have a problem with negative masks.


you aren't supposed to have problems ...


What's this thing with the mask that I've been reading? I don't see it. I scanned old negatives:


the mask is put there by the designers to make the negative work better. If you hold up a colour neg to the light you see it looks orange.

With proper handling when you scan a neg you won't see it. If you're not seeing it, then all is well ;-)



Is there something I should be expecting to do when I get to scan these negatives or should I just stay "ignorant"? Thanks and Happy New Year everyone. Alan.

Happy New Year mate

Well, that's good to know. So why do others say there're problems and they actually scan as positive film and then go through some reversal of the orange mask in PP? Tks and Happy New Year to you too. Alan

You're certainly achieving excellent results. Perhaps you could post more detail on your technique.
Pete

On the medium format shots, I basically scanned with 2400 bit, 24 bit and ICE. I used the Epson film holder which stinks if the film is curled, but not bad it flat. It takes awhile to get use to. No other settings. Since I bracketed my shots, the V600 lets me pre-scan the 3 shots at one time so that's a help over the V500. I may fully scan all three into the computer or just pick what appears to be the best one or two and scan just that.

I'm using Elements 8 to post process. I rotate if required, and crop just the picture portion leaving out any extra holder border captured during the scan. I then use the Spot Healing Brush tools to get rid of the dust and crap that ICE didn't remove during the scan. I put the picture on 100% and then start at the upper left, clean the dust, click the scroll right arrow and repeat until I get to the end. Then scroll down one and do the same thing going right to left. Just repeat this until the whole picture is cleaned. Then I save a full TIFF copy because I haven't figured out layers yet.

Then I use Levels, sometimes Auto level, to bring back the colors pretty good. I slide the right side to the right end of the histogram and the left to the left of the histogram. Play around with contrast, shadow fill and I like using darks a lot. Pretty much by eye so I probably have clipped in places. Add a little contrast and saturation if needed, light balance and sharpen and then save again or as a jpeg at 1200 or 1600 pixels on a side for the web. My technique is very ad hoc. A little here and a little there. I have to come up with a better more consistent approach; I should read and follow some of the Photoshop procedures.

On the Scuba 35mm shots I used auto correct during the scan which helped get rid of the blue underwater color casts. However, I played around with that in PP and I believe you can pretty much get the same results if you do that afterwards in Elements and just scan "flat" as I do with the medium format film.

Hope this info helped and let me know if you have any suggestions. Alan

Thanks Alan. When I first came back to scanning I was having difficulty getting the colours right and solved the problem by buying a photoshop plugin called ColorPerfect. Now I've more experience with colour balancing without using the plugin and occasionally get better results. Generally, ColorPerfect gives very quick results though.
When not using ColorPerfect I invert the image and set black and white points for each of the colour channels separately. I then set the grey and adjust contrast and sharpen.
I wrote a thread about scanning with the V700, and using ColorPerfect here (http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/film-forum/137284-colour-negative-scanning-vuescan-colorperfect.html)

All the best,
Pete

Thanks Pete: I read your work flow. I don't have Vuescan or Colorperfect. I'm using Epson scan and Elements. Why do you feel you have to invert the colors first? I don't know what Epson scan does, but it appears to work once you apply some adjustments with Elements afterwards.

I'm think how painters work. They mix and smush the colors together in a pleasing combination that looks good to their eyes. I figure if I move the sliders until I get something pleasing to my eyes, it should be OK with viewers. After all, that's the end result we're looking for. Actually I'm not changing the colors as much as the lighting Levels. I know its a simplistic approach but I did it that way because that's all I knew when I scanned them. But since you say my pictures look OK, and thanks for the compliment, why fix something that isn't broken? Of course, my pictures are not perfecet and I was wodnering if you or anyone else has any suggustions with using the programs I have to make the results look even better. Alan

My results scanning as a positive weren't successful and feedback suggested that scanning and scanning software is about getting all the information from the negative before using imaging software like Photoshop to process the image. I set up Vuescan to give RAW output and this happens to be a negative image with inverted colours.
Results achieved with ColorPerfect can be quite different to those achieved by my messing with levels alone on the negative image. Often i achieve very similar results with the two methods. Here's an example.
The first is with levels adjustment and messing with colour balance sliders alone. This is quite time consuming.
527


The second is using ColorPerfect which is often instantanous but sometimes I don't feel it looks quite as delicate as levels alone so I go at it again with colour balance sliders.
526

It sounds like you adjust your scanning software to achieve a good positive result then further modify in Photoshop.
Pete

I was wodnering if you or anyone else has any suggustions with using the programs I have to make the results look even better. Alan

It doesn't look like you need to improve your results, LOL.
Pete

Pete It seems like your second done with Coloperfect is more saturated and brighter than the first. There appears to be some burnout (clipping) in some of the flowers. BUt the difference could just be adjustments you can change in either way you do it. My suggestion is whichever program you use, adjust until you are happy with what it looks like. Which scanner are you using? Alan.

Well, that's good to know. So why do others say there're problems and they actually scan as positive film and then go through some reversal of the orange mask in PP? Tks and Happy New Year to you too. Alan

one reason for scanning Neg as Pos and inverting is you can maintain better control over the scanner. Negative mode seems to always make assumptions about how it "should" behave, but does not.

Particularly with Epson or Nikon drivers. Like yourself I mainly use Epson's driver for the scanner and then work in Photoshop.

This is how I do it on my Epson or Nikon

http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2009/10/quick-negative-scan-tutorial.html


there's a few more links at the bottom.

Alan, Happy New Year to you too!

Like the others, I think you are doing very well. Looking through your images you seem to have achieved a pleasing and natural looking end result on almost all of them, and that is the most important thing. The workflow you describe shows the way this whole business should work. So yeah, the short answer is - don't change anything! Well, not until (or if) you start encountering problems, that is. :D

To answer your question more specifically, there are many variables which may be the cause of people getting such varying degrees of satisfaction from negative film. These can include the particular scanner they are using, the scan software, the particular film, their level of understanding of what it takes to get the best scans from their scanner and software, the skill level they have with post-processing tools (e.g. Photoshop), their skill in making good exposures in the first place, whether they use fresh film (or for example tend to let it sit in a hot glove box for years before use), and possibly even the quality of the lab developing their film. One other very key factor in my opinion is that people's sensitivity to color varies greatly - i.e., some of us are just a lot picker than others! I can attest to the fact that I have gone through a couple cycles of first thinking I had good results, only to break through to a new level after trying something different and discovering improvements in color (more realistic, more "pop," etc.), better tonal gradation, better detail in the shadows or in the highlights, and so forth.

Now it seems that some are lucky enough that they just turn the scanner to "auto" mode and everything comes out fine! I have had that experience myself, but just as often I have encountered a particular type of film (or a particular roll, or even just one particular image on a given roll) that for whatever reason just can't seem to be cast into something natural looking - no matter how hard I try! Those experiences - and it is possible you will have them yet as you try other films - tend to cause people to rethink their workflow and question exactly what is going on in the process of converting a color negative scan into a quality positive image. I wish you luck in not having to go through that!

Like some others mentioned, I too have been trying out ColorPerfect lately, with hopes of getting a consistently good starting point from each scan; which I can then fine tune for best results with relatively minimal effort. The claim made by the author of that plugin is that the way color inversion has historically been handled - including the way it is done in Photoshop, and presumably in at least some scan software too - is mathematically incorrect, resulting in loss of "color integrity." This explanation makes sense to me when I look at scans that I just can't seem to correct. In these cases it is as if the colors have been so badly distorted or damaged that normal adjustments (such as curves, levels, etc.) are inadequate. The ColorPerfect plugin basically requires you to make a raw (linear) scan which bypasses your scanner's inversion-to-positive algorithm, as well as any and all other processes your software might be inclined to perform automatically. My current understanding (mostly what I gather from the whole "color integrity" concept) is that it is not the orange mask itself which is the problem, despite people's tendency to blame it. But rather it is how the inversion is performed, with the mask removal actually being almost trivial.

Anyway, maybe what is going on is that your scanner software just happens to be doing everything right! If so... well, I envy you! But I wish you good luck and continued scanning success. :)

Jeff

Thanks Jeff and Pellicle(what's your name?) for your suggestions and comments. I did what I did because that's all I knew to do at the time. The reason I posted is because afterwards, I started to read all these issues about casts and other problems with scanning. I scanned 15-year old negatives from 3 different types (Agfa Optima, Fuji SHG 100, Ektar 25) and probably thirty different rolls. ALlhough the colors were different (eg Fuji skin more natural), I followed the same process basically in scanning for all the shots and then adjusting in Elements. Maybe the Epson program is working better than others you guys are using, but I haven't done anything special. I'll be shooting Portra 160vc and 160nc soon so it will be interesting to see what happens then. I hope I don't run into the problems with color and other stuff like you are. I really don't want to spend so much time on first scanning programming and then PP programming in the computer. Thanks again.

Oh one clarification. Most of the landscape photos were on Velvia 50 (positive film). I've also tagged each picture with the film type so you can see if it's Velvia or one of the thre negative films I mentioned. Alan.

Pete It seems like your second done with Coloperfect is more saturated and brighter than the first. There appears to be some burnout (clipping) in some of the flowers. BUt the difference could just be adjustments you can change in either way you do it. My suggestion is whichever program you use, adjust until you are happy with what it looks like. Which scanner are you using? Alan.



I agree Alan. It was a quick conversion. There is a tab on ColorPerfect to prevent clipping highlights and blacks but I forgot about it when I did this conversion!!
The scanner is the Epsom V700.
Pete

...and Pellicle(what's your name?)

its Chris ... pleased to meet you by the way :-)



I did what I did because that's all I knew to do at the time.

and quite the best thing to do if you ask me. Get in and get stuff happening. When problems arise learn about them to solve them rather than being worried about the things which may go wrong.


I scanned 15-year old negatives from 3 different types (Agfa Optima, Fuji SHG 100, Ektar 25) and probably thirty different rolls. ALlhough the colors were different (eg Fuji skin more natural), I followed the same process basically in scanning for all the shots and then adjusting in Elements.

with Fuji and Kodak (for instance) making claims that their product has advantages over the other there must be some visible differences ...



Maybe the Epson program is working better than others you guys are using, but I haven't done anything special. I'll be shooting Portra 160vc and 160nc soon so it will be interesting to see what happens then.

it does the job for me too ... be interested in hearing how you go with the two films. Try to shoot the same thing in the same light to compare them.


Have fun :-)

Hi Chris: Glad to meet you. They say that the Portra films are suppose to be very easy to scan - Kodak developed them that way. The new Kodak 400 (no suffix) is suppose to replace the 400nc and 400vc and eventually the 160nc and 160vc according to some other forums I've read. All the Portra's are suppose to scan better than other negative films. Why don't you try the new 400 and see if it works better with your scanner.

Pete: Glad you found the right setting. The V700 is a lot better scanner than the V600 I have. The pictures that I've seen posted on the web seem a lot sharper and clearer- just a lot better than the V600's. I'd really like to have the Nikon 9000 I think it is but that's a little too much money for where I am right now. Alan.

Hello
Your pictures are great. -Just stay "ignorant".
I own an Epson V750 with Silverfast software, scanning positives as positive
and negatives as negative and never encountered a problem.
I'm using the Epson medium format filmholder with the default
height above the glass plate (3 mm (0.12 inch).
Sharpening is turned off in Silverfast and I use neither ICE nor anything else
that Silverfast has to offer in terms of "bells and whistles".
My V750 is a bit modified in that I've painted it on the inside with matt black paint,
-both the base and the lid, to prevent reflected light.
I have no idea how much of a difference it makes, but cameras are matt black on the inside for a reason, so why not?
The film strips are kept flat in the holder by placing a ground glass plate on
top of the film strip,-ground side down. No glass on the underside of the film.
As for sharpness, this I what I get (Velvia, underexposed, had to crank up exposure level in SF) with no sharpening neither in Silverfast nor in Photoshop:

http://www.sapmigovva.net/images/bronica/velvia.jpg

Adding a modest amount of noise reduction and sharpening in Photoshop
(USM, 75%-0.3 pixels) gives this result:

http://www.sapmigovva.net/images/bronica/velvia_sharpened.jpg

If your V600 produces the same level of sharpness,-keep it.

Hi Norway. My V600 gives nothing close to the sharpness you're getting straight out of the V750. Also you colors are better. What did you do with Levels and color? Alan

I've done no color correction, but the levels for each color channel is tuned in Silverfast like in the example below:

http://www.sapmigovva.net/images/bronica/histogram.jpg

The Velvia scan was underexposed, and I cranked up the exposure in Silverfast to maximum which is never a good idea.

Below is a negative which was correctly exposed. Fujicolor 160 C, developed in my bathroom.
I just tweaked the levels in Silverfast to fit the histograms and used Silverfast's Negafix with the profile for Fujicolor 160C.
No sharpening or ICE or anything,-just a straight one pass 48-bit scan.

I lined up objects of different colors and added a grey bottle of glue to
check if it came out as grey. You may notice that the grey is a bit yellow,
which makes sense since the illumination was a warm yellowish bulb.
I do think the colors came out in a very natural way straight from the V750,
and no color correction was done in Photoshop.


http://www.sapmigovva.net/images/bronica/neg.jpg

Below is the same image sharpened and noise reduced in Photoshop.
Only very modest sharpening is needed.
I may not have hit the focusing sweet-spot of the V750 yet, so perhaps
there's even more sharpness to get from the scanner.

In the future I'll look into vibration damping as a means of dragging even
more sharpness out of the V750. The scanner is light weight and quite
badly buildt in my opinion. A stiffer chassis and a sturdier and more heavy
construction would dampen vibration and I'm convinced that this would
increase sharpness. If anyone disagrees, be my guest,-but in case
vibration has nothing to do with lack of sharpness I'll be happy to leave
my sturdy tripod at home when shooting landscape. Any principle which
is good for a camera is good for a scanner as well.

I think the V750 has potential that Epson hasn't exploited. They do make
parts for other scanner manufacturers,-scanners that costs more than a new car.
But the V750 is a consumer scanner, not a prosumer scanner so they save
costs by making it flimsy. In that way you and I can afford to buy it.


http://www.sapmigovva.net/images/bronica/neg_sharpened.jpg