Reversing a Kodacolor negative file image

RH
Posted By
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 7, 2007
Views
1730
Replies
19
Status
Closed
I’m an advanced Photoshop user, now running CS3.

I do a lot of film scanning, mostly of images from the past, going back as far as 65+ years. In the past I’ve used a Canon FS2710, which is a respectable 35mm scanner at 2720 dpi, especially considering that the film images themselves are probably the limiting factor in the final quality. While this scanner is acceptable, it is a SCSI unit, and will only function on my backup computer, sicne I didn’t include a SCSI card when I built my new machine.

Last year I bought a new flatbed/film scanner, the Canon 9950F. The features looked great, especially the ability to do 12 mounted slides, or 30 negatives in one shot, using the film adapters that came with the unit. When I first tried doing slides there, the quality was very mediocre, independent of the dpi selected. The resultant image looked "out of focus", and scanning negatives also gave very unsharp results. So much for all the nice features of this unit

I then put together a setup where I could use my Nikon D70, with a high end macro 80mm lens, and ran some tests of shooting the slides to create digital files. This proved to be a very good method, and also very fast.

I would like to try shooting 35mm color negatives. But I’m unsure what path I should take to remove the orange background color of the Kodacolor film base, and then reverse the final images in color .

Can you offer any suggested paths in Photoshop CS3 that I could try, to determine if this is a viable procedure? Possibly a Channels approach would be interesting to try.

Thanks for any help or suggestions anyone can offer.

Ron Hirsch
Related Tags
file image negative

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

PF
Peter_Figen
Aug 7, 2007
You can try inverting the image and using Auto Levels.
JJ
John_Joslin
Aug 7, 2007
Does your scanner not have a setting for colour negatives?
C
Cooter
Aug 7, 2007
You may or may not know that the orange layer in color negative film is not just a stray layer. It’s purpose is to correct the dificiencies in the cyan, magenta and yellow dye layers which form the image – in other words, a masking layer. Simply removing the orange coloration is not the entire solution, even though that will give reasonably acceptable results. The best solution I’ve found is to use a program called Vue-Scan with your scanner. It is capable of dealing with any number of color negative types and can be set for the type you are scanning. I’m not sure this will work, but you might be able to digitize the negatives with your camera, then open them in Vue-Scan and make the appropriage conversions. I think they have an evaluation download available. Do a Google on Vue-Scan and see what turns up. Hope this helps.
J
Jim
Aug 7, 2007
wrote in message
I’m an advanced Photoshop user, now running CS3.

I do a lot of film scanning, mostly of images from the past, going back as far as 65+ years. In the past I’ve used a Canon FS2710, which is a respectable 35mm scanner at 2720 dpi, especially considering that the film images themselves are probably the limiting factor in the final quality. While this scanner is acceptable, it is a SCSI unit, and will only function
on my backup computer, sicne I didn’t include a SCSI card when I built my new machine.

Last year I bought a new flatbed/film scanner, the Canon 9950F. The features
looked great, especially the ability to do 12 mounted slides, or 30 negatives in one shot, using the film adapters that came with the unit. When
I first tried doing slides there, the quality was very mediocre, independent
of the dpi selected. The resultant image looked "out of focus", and scanning
negatives also gave very unsharp results. So much for all the nice features
of this unit

I then put together a setup where I could use my Nikon D70, with a high end
macro 80mm lens, and ran some tests of shooting the slides to create digital
files. This proved to be a very good method, and also very fast.
I would like to try shooting 35mm color negatives. But I’m unsure what path
I should take to remove the orange background color of the Kodacolor film base, and then reverse the final images in color .

Can you offer any suggested paths in Photoshop CS3 that I could try, to determine if this is a viable procedure? Possibly a Channels approach would
be interesting to try.

Thanks for any help or suggestions anyone can offer.

Ron Hirsch
My solution would be to get my scanner fixed. The scanner software is surely capable of converting
a color negative into a positive image. As an aside, the orange mask is needed so that color printers
can setup their filtration. You could use a filter in PS for this operation, I suppose.

Jim
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 7, 2007
I thought I made it clear that I’m not using my scanner for this. I’m shooting the negs with a DSLR.

The primary problem is removing the orange color from the negative. Once that can be eliminated properly, reversing the colors will be the easier of the two steps.

Just inverting the colors will not resolve the overall situatiuon.

I am hoping to find someone who has done this before.

Ron Hirsch
JJ
John_Joslin
Aug 7, 2007
I know that, I just thought you gave up too easily on the scanner option. It’s got to be easier than frigging around with a camera.
TG
Tom Glowka
Aug 7, 2007
Ron

Another option may be to get a SCSI to USB connect and hook up your old scanner since you were pleased with the results in the past.
SP
Sid_Phillips
Aug 7, 2007
There’s a tutorial on how to scan negatives with GIMP and remove the orange negative mask. You can probably adapt those instructions for Photoshop.

<http://www.khk.net/color/gimp_negative_scanning.html>
CH
clifford_hager
Aug 7, 2007
Shoot your negatives in RAW. Find a fairly blue WB setting that when saved as a .tif will color invert to natural colors. It takes some experimentation but I’ve used this process with some success for exactly what you are describing.

One more thing you should try if you’re not already is to direct connect your camera to the computer and use Nikon Capture Pro to trigger and download your images directly to your hard drive. Saves tons of time not messing with the CF card.
FN
Fred_Nirque
Aug 7, 2007
Have a look at VueScan,
www.hamrick.com
Aside from being a scanning program which supports 700 different film and flatbed scanners, it will also process RAW files from digital cameras as though they were scans (the D70 is supported), and will automatically deal with the orange filter layer when used with film negative settings.

You would only need the standard program, which is cheap at $39.95, but try the demo first. Be warned that the advanced interface can be a bit confusing at first and takes a bit of patience to learn, but it is a very good program.

(Disclaimer: I have no connection with VueScan, but have used it for years to drive Nikon 8000ED and Epson 4870 scanners and on occasion to process copy work photographed with the D2x).
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 7, 2007
Thanks for the link.

I’ve used the approach in Photoshop that GIMP defines many times, to get rid of color offsets. It has never worked that well for very large offsets, but it is worth a try,

Ron Hirsch

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

wrote in message
There’s a tutorial on how to scan negatives with GIMP and remove the orange negative mask. You can probably adapt those instructions for Photoshop.

<http://www.khk.net/color/gimp_negative_scanning.html>
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 7, 2007
Hi Cliff,

Thanks for the suggestions. Shooting in RAW does make sense. Once I find some reasonable settings for WP and inverting the neg, I can process all the shots by creating an action to do it.

Ron Hirsch
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 7, 2007
Hi Tom,

Thanks for the suggestion. I do not want to use the 2710 if I can find a way to do it via the D70. It’s at least 20 times faster via the D70.

Ron

Another option may be to get a SCSI to USB connect and hook up your old scanner since you were pleased with the results in the past.
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 7, 2007
Hi Fred,

Thanks for the suggestion. I have the advanced version of Vuescan already. I’ll look into your suggestion also.

Ron Hirsch
L
LenHewitt
Aug 8, 2007
Ronald,

The reason that removing the colour correction masking is problematic is that it is NOT constant over the frame. The mask is created by the dye couplers that are not used to create dye during processing and so are formed in inverse ratio to the amount of dye created.

This results in a yellow mask being created in the magenta dye layer in inverse ratio to the amount of magenta dye and a pink mask (stronger than the yellow mask) being created in the cyan dye layer in inverse ratio to the amount of cyan dye. There is no mask created in the yellow dye layer.

This of course means that really successful mask removal without affecting overall colour is very demanding.
KR
Keith_Randolph
Aug 8, 2007
Hello,
I used to shoot color negs for years and scanned them in to work on. Since you are doing it by shooting with a DSLR, your are in a sense "scanning it" to bring it into the computer. As far as getting rid of the orange mask goes, I found this tutorial to be very helpful and very easy to use.

<http://computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_6_1.htm>

It may be "old" but it works without costing anything more than the time to read through it(and it’s illustrated).

Hope this helps!

KeithR
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 8, 2007
Hi Keith,

Thanks for the link. I was wondering if channels would be the way to go, and Ian’s method looks great.

The only difference in my situation is that I’ll be using the D70 to create a digital file, as opposed to a scanner.

And, it costs nothing to try this out. I’ll give it a whirl. And if it does the job, I’ll create a few Photoshop actions to do some of the work.

Ian’s method is just what I was looking for. The final quality does not have to be up to "PRO" standards, as these images will be used in computer slide shows. And if they look good on my 30" monitor, they’ll certainly be fine on the monitors of all others who view the show.

Ron Hirsch
OU
Olaf_Ulrich
Aug 9, 2007
Ron,

do not repeat NOT use simply Photoshop’s (or Gimp’s) Invert function. Also do not follow Ian Lyon’s instructions on the Computer Darkroom page. They will yield poor results. You can tell images scanned from negatives and then processed that way immediately from miles away due to their weird colours. That ‘scanned negative’ look usually comes from distorted colour integrity which basically is a colour cast in the shadows which is different from the highlights’ colour. Of course, in photographed (as opposed to scanned) negatives the problem is just the same.

Instead, follow the instructions on this page:

<http://www.c-f-systems.com/ColorNegs.html>

The resumee from that page is: Do shoot in raw mode. Convert to 16-bit TIFF or PSD with all Camera Raw settings set to zero, except white balance (use 6,000 K or thereabouts), brightness (use 50), and contrast (use 25)—these settings should yield a linear conversion. Load the linear-converted negative 16-bit image into Photoshop. *Before* inverting the image, adjust the shadows by adjusting the negative’s white point (Note: This is *not* the same as adjusting the black point after inversion!) Then invert the image using Image > Invert. Adjust the highlights by applying the white point adjustment again but this time on the positive image. So you’re doing the white-point adjustment *twice*—once before inverting and once after.

Now do the fine adjustments of colour and contrast, then save.

By the way, also the rest of the C F Systems website is worth a look or two.

— Olaf
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Aug 9, 2007
Olaf,

Thanks for the info. I will look into that approach.

The suggestion to use Vuescan was also made by several persons. I do have the advanced version of Vuescan, and checking with Ed Hamrick, the author, I got some interesting info from him. Vuescan can of course works with a wide range of scanners, and the program is considered an excellent program to handle scanning.

Ed advised me that Vuescan can handle the task I want to do in excellent fashion. In essence, Vuescan can do its processing from a saved file, as opposed to that which will come from the scanner, when a scanner is used. The following settings must be used –

Just set "Input|Source" to "File", "Input|Mode" to "Transparency" and
"Input|Media" to "Color negative".

This process seems very straightforward, and when I return from a weekend trip, I’ll run this through its paces to confirm its performance. From all that I’ve seen so far, shooting in RAW mode is probably the best way to go. Actually, I’ll set the Nikon D70 to RAW plus jpeg for my testing, and process both to see how different the results may be.

I’ll post back here when I’ve completed my tests, and report on my success (or failure).

Ron Hirsch

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections