First stab at scanning negatives. Any advice?

gad-westy

gad-westy

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Graham
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This seems like as good a place as any to ask. I've been given a Epson Perfection 3200 Scanner complete with film holders for 35mm, 120 and 5x4. Using Mac's Image Capture software I've begun to play around with a little scanning of some negatives I have kicking around. B+W 35mm seems fairly straightforward but when it comes to colour 120 (square in my case, Kodak Ektar on Bronny SQAi), I'm struggling a little to get any real definition. I feel like I'm missing a trick or two here so would anybody be kind enough to give me a little crash course?
 
Have you had a look at Epson's website, they probably have their own application for the scanner, I know HP do.
 
I'd definitely try the Epson software first. Also, unless you're really intent on saving time, don't get too hung up on getting it right out of the scanner. Just aim to scan as much info as you can (by adjusting the histogram to not clip highlights/blacks and not turning on unsharp mask) and then fixing the "look" in whatever processing software you use.
 
I'll second what Keith said: use the free Epson scan software and adjust the histogram sliders so it isn't clipping any of the highlights/shadows. Keep the middle slider set on 1.0. Then adjust the scan in your image software (Lightroom etc.) I see little point spending extra money on Vuescan as it doesn't do anything fundamentally different.

If you want to get fancy, and for better control of the colour, I'd recommend scanning with all the colour adjustment turned off and scan as a positive (so it creates a negative image). Then convert it to a positive image using the Color Perfect plugin for Photoshop. It's not easy software to use, but it does give you a huge amount of control. If you want to see the image as it is on the film's emulsion, then use the former method. If you want to see what the film manufacturer intended the final print to look like when using their own paper and chemicals (i.e. often more balanced and natural), then the Color Perfect route is the best method I've found.
 
Cheers all. Some invaluable info here for me to wade through. One last question. Not being familiar with scanners, what can I expect from the 3200? It allows me to scan at 6400 dpi which on a medium format image gives an enormous file size but actual detail when zooming into an image seems somewhat lacking. Am I expecting too much here or maybe its a technique thing.
 
Graham - Could you post a couple of your scans here so we can see what you're getting? Would be good to also post a crop of a little bit at 100%. I have a new Epson V550 and the full size scans do seem a little soft, so I'm interested to see what other people are getting too.
 
FujiLove said:
I'll second what Keith said: use the free Epson scan software and adjust the histogram sliders so it isn't clipping any of the highlights/shadows. Keep the middle slider set on 1.0. Then adjust the scan in your image software (Lightroom etc.) I see little point spending extra money on Vuescan as it doesn't do anything fundamentally different.

If you want to get fancy, and for better control of the colour, I'd recommend scanning with all the colour adjustment turned off and scan as a positive (so it creates a negative image). Then convert it to a positive image using the Color Perfect plugin for Photoshop. It's not easy software to use, but it does give you a huge amount of control. If you want to see the image as it is on the film's emulsion, then use the former method. If you want to see what the film manufacturer intended the final print to look like when using their own paper and chemicals (i.e. often more balanced and natural), then the Color Perfect route is the best method I've found.
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Very interested with everything which is said here.

Is the color perfect plugin is only for photoshop or is there similar plugin for lightroom? I find photoshop to convoluted and only have lightroom on my computer.

Another question, in vuescan you have to lock the colour cast by first selecting an area of black between two negative. Is the same feature exist in the Epson software or do you do all the colour calibration within photoshop?

And a last question, my scanner has infrared cleaning. Am I right to think that if my negative is clean of dust and unscratch I should leave the infrared off as it would only result in a slight deterioration of the quality.
 
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gad-westy said:
Cheers all. Some invaluable info here for me to wade through. One last question. Not being familiar with scanners, what can I expect from the 3200? It allows me to scan at 6400 dpi which on a medium format image gives an enormous file size but actual detail when zooming into an image seems somewhat lacking. Am I expecting too much here or maybe its a technique thing.
Click to expand...
Standard advice is that the top-line number is the theoretical resolution that the scan head could get, if only the optics were better (ie, more expensive). I scan at 2400.
 
Lemaildetom said:
Very interested with everything which is said here.

Is the color perfect plugin is only for photoshop or is there similar plugin for lightroom? I find photoshop to convoluted and only have lightroom on my computer.

Another question, in vuescan you have to lock the colour cast by first selecting an area of black between two negative. Is the same feature exist in the Epson software or do you do all the colour calibration within photoshop?

And a last question, my scanner has infrared cleaning. Am I right to think that if my negative is clean of dust and unscratch I should leave the infrared off as it would only result in a slight deterioration of the quality.
Click to expand...

Epson scan will try and figure out the colour cast if you leave it on auto mode (and you can then tweak it if you want) or you can scan a completely uncorrected file, (sort of a RAW file) and do all the post processing in Photoshop. For me it depends on the type of image. If it's a quick snap on a 35mm roll, I'll just take what the scanner gives me on auto and that's fine. If it's a nice shot out of my Rollei, I'll spend the time to scan it as a large uncorrected file, then move it into Color Perfect where I can select the emulsion preset (they have hundreds!), add and remove black and white to prevent clipping and finally move it into Lightroom. At that stage I try to only do the things that I could with an enlarger, such as cropping and boosting the contrast. Just a personal preference as I hate 'cheating' with my film shots :)
 
Lemaildetom said:
Very interested with everything which is said here.

Is the color perfect plugin is only for photoshop or is there similar plugin for lightroom? I find photoshop to convoluted and only have lightroom on my computer.

Another question, in vuescan you have to lock the colour cast by first selecting an area of black between two negative. Is the same feature exist in the Epson software or do you do all the colour calibration within photoshop?

And a last question, my scanner has infrared cleaning. Am I right to think that if my negative is clean of dust and unscratch I should leave the infrared off as it would only result in a slight deterioration of the quality.
Click to expand...

Re. the infrared dust detection: try doing a couple of test scans with it on and off and see if you can see any difference in softness. Some dust is really hard to see and takes ages to spot it out in Photoshop, so it's worth letting it do it's thing if you can. Note that you can't use the scratch removal feature when you turn off all the colour correction and do the 'RAW' scan. Or at least, I haven't found a way to do it with Epson Scan.
 
Lemaildetom said:
Is the color perfect plugin is only for photoshop or is there similar plugin for lightroom? I find photoshop to convoluted and only have lightroom on my computer.
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FujiLove said:
I believe it's Photoshop only. More details here: http://www.colorneg.com/colorperfect.html?lang=en
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No, it is not Photoshop only. You will need to use it on a programme that is capable of running Photoshop plugins, however. I very rarely scan my own colour negatives anymore, but I use Colorperfect with Photoline when I do.

Lemaildetom said:
And a last question, my scanner has infrared cleaning. Am I right to think that if my negative is clean of dust and unscratch I should leave the infrared off as it would only result in a slight deterioration of the quality.
Click to expand...

I would be surprised if both your negatives were completely clear of dust and if you could detect any deterioration in the quality of your scans, unless you had the ICE at its absolute highest setting. Personally, I scan all of my own negatives and slides with ICE set at medium.

For me, the biggest argument for turning ICE off is that it saves heaps of time.
 
Cheers once again folks. Trying to absorb some of this and put it into practice. I'll try and get some examples up once I've got something representative.

A quick question picking up on abdoujaparov's post. If I crank the resolution to the max is just diminishing returns or could I degrade quality? Trying a few at 2400 as I type.
 
gad-westy said:
Cheers once again folks. Trying to absorb some of this and put it into practice. I'll try and get some examples up once I've got something representative.

A quick question picking up on abdoujaparov's post. If I crank the resolution to the max is just diminishing returns or could I degrade quality? Trying a few at 2400 as I type.
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I doubt it will degrade quality. It probably just won't give you any more quality. I.e. scanning at 3200 or scanning at 6400 and reducing the file to 50% the size may produce the same amount of detail. However in my experience those two files will look different due to the way the program applies it's image size algorithms. You may prefer the one that started out as the bigger file. Then again, it may not be worth all the extra time it takes you to perform the scan. One thing I've learned with scanning is it takes plenty of trial and testing to sort out what works for you. I don't think you can just copy what others do, you need to stick a decent negative under the glass and scan it loads of times on different settings and then post process it in different ways. And I know it sounds tedious, but I would get a notebook and write down the settings for each scan, the file name and the results. Then you can quickly look back and look at each side-by side. I did about 50 scans before I settled on a rough work flow, and I'm still learning and tweaking.
 
gad-westy said:
Cheers once again folks. Trying to absorb some of this and put it into practice. I'll try and get some examples up once I've got something representative.

A quick question picking up on abdoujaparov's post. If I crank the resolution to the max is just diminishing returns or could I degrade quality? Trying a few at 2400 as I type.
Click to expand...

It's not even a question of diminishing returns or degrading quality; you'll just be adding pixels, resulting in bloated file sizes, without resolving any additional detail.

For the absolute best quality, you'd probably be best served to scan at the very highest resolution and then downsize it, but I feel like the large investment in time is usually not worth the very small gain in quality when doing this.

Personally, I would recommend adjusting your scanning to accommodate your print sizes. For instance, I find that 12"x12" is as large as I'd be willing to print a 6x6cm negative, so I might scan at 2400dpi and then resize it to 3600x3600 pixels (about 70%). Other times I'll just scan at 1200dpi when I know that I won't be printing large images from the scans.
 
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I've kept out of this thread because although I've used an Epson 3200, I didn't use EpsonScan (I use VueScan as it had features I needed that EpsonScan didn't) and I don't use a Mac. However, if anyone wants to see a sample of what I think was produced by a 3200, see this Flickr link. I think I uploaded the full size scan, but since flickr changed round I haven't been able to work out how to avoid the default viewing size (and I hate the new flickr way of displaying things, so I've removed most of my stuff). The camera was an Exakta; the year 1967 - and I'm the horizontal one.
 
The 3200 is a decent scanner, and I'd check the neg is a good one and not for e.g. OOF or exposure way way out...there is no reason why you can't get a good scan using Epson software (if I can get it so can you). Once you have exploited what Epson can do (forget histograms ATM and just set for pro mode), and then go from there and after if you are not happy then maybe you can go to say Vuescan. But after scanning it's handy to have Photoshop or similar to do some tweaking. Also if you borrow an old copy of Photoshop I don't think Adobe would mind bending their rules if you can't afford the later versions.
 
Cheers Brian. I am having a little more success with it having used many of the tip picked up here. I'm really loving the medium format stuff in particular. So far I've exclusively been using Image Capture (seems to be default mac scanning software, not sure if linked to Epson) and then processing through Aperture. I do seem to be seeing a lot of dust on my scans though. Have tried brushing them and tried the software dust removal tool but not quite there yet. Any handy tips?
 
gad-westy said:
I do seem to be seeing a lot of dust on my scans though. Have tried brushing them and tried the software dust removal tool but not quite there yet. Any handy tips?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately sometimes there's no effective way of cleaning scans automatically and it has to be a case of the clone/heal tool in editing software. It can seem like a horrifically slow process at first but it gets quicker with practice. :)
 
gad-westy said:
I do seem to be seeing a lot of dust on my scans though. Have tried brushing them and tried the software dust removal tool but not quite there yet. Any handy tips?
Click to expand...

I've noticed that pros seem to use cans of compressed air to dust off negatives before scanning, rather than brushing them with anything. You can pick them up in Poundland etc.
 
gad-westy said:
Cheers Brian. I am having a little more success with it having used many of the tip picked up here. I'm really loving the medium format stuff in particular. So far I've exclusively been using Image Capture (seems to be default mac scanning software, not sure if linked to Epson) and then processing through Aperture. I do seem to be seeing a lot of dust on my scans though. Have tried brushing them and tried the software dust removal tool but not quite there yet. Any handy tips?
Click to expand...

A review of the Epson 3200 http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Scanners/Epson_3200/page_1.htm

As for dust:- you have to make sure the glass and neg are clean using a rocket blower before scanning....best to wipe the neg and glass with a cotton handkerchief before blowing (belt and braces)...good luck Graham
 
I'm a little bit weird (I know that those of you who have met me know this already) in that I actually quite enjoy dust spotting the images after scanning. I find it relaxing and somewhat cathartic.....:D
 
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Andysnap said:
I'm a little bit weird (I know that those of you who have met me know this already) in that I actually quite enjoy dust spotting the images after scanning. I find it relaxing and somewhat cathartic.....:D
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I'm beginning to like the dust spots, hairs and scratches. To quote Anton Corjbin, "imperfection is perfection".
 
FujiLove said:
I'll second what Keith said: use the free Epson scan software and adjust the histogram sliders so it isn't clipping any of the highlights/shadows. Keep the middle slider set on 1.0. Then adjust the scan in your image software (Lightroom etc.) I see little point spending extra money on Vuescan as it doesn't do anything fundamentally different.

If you want to get fancy, and for better control of the colour, I'd recommend scanning with all the colour adjustment turned off and scan as a positive (so it creates a negative image). Then convert it to a positive image using the Color Perfect plugin for Photoshop. It's not easy software to use, but it does give you a huge amount of control. If you want to see the image as it is on the film's emulsion, then use the former method. If you want to see what the film manufacturer intended the final print to look like when using their own paper and chemicals (i.e. often more balanced and natural), then the Color Perfect route is the best method I've found.
Click to expand...


Scanning numpty here so I have been following this thread. I understand the histogram part, and moving the triangles to encompass all the curve but why set the middle slider at 1? I am scanning some Velvia at the moment and - inspired by this thread - have found the histogram and moved the triangles but I notice my middle one reads 1.05?

Mark
 
No you fool.... 1.05... are you insane, you could tear a hole in the space/time continuum...:D
 
Threeracers said:
Scanning numpty here so I have been following this thread. I understand the histogram part, and moving the triangles to encompass all the curve but why set the middle slider at 1? I am scanning some Velvia at the moment and - inspired by this thread - have found the histogram and moved the triangles but I notice my middle one reads 1.05?

Mark
Click to expand...

It standardises the gamma (brightness) so the image data isn't compressed one way or the other. It also helps to keep all the scans the same. I.e. if you are scanning a whole roll of film you could theoretically apply the same adjustments to them all.
 
So where you have most of the curve on the left of the histogram (is that an underexposed image?) , would you move the sliders down to meet the top of the curve - avoiding the flat section? When I do that it seems to oversaturate!
 
Sorry I'm jumping in the discussion to ask more and more question... Looks like we're a few at the beginner scanning stage!

Here is a screenshot of my epson software scanning a B&W


Untitled by Lemaildetom on Talk Photography

- I have notice that for Black and White negative, if i use the auto-tune button (the black ball with to red triangle), the software usually clip some of the data so I then re-ajust the high and low in the histogram. With colour negative so far, I get better result with the auto-tune button than when i try to spend ages (even tried a bit of vuescan but it's not made anything easier), at the end it seems that the auto settings are doing a good job at colour? Anyone as similar experiences? Or is it me being lucky (i've only try one roll of colour so far)

-I don't understand much how is the output cursors affect the scan? It seems natural to me to match the input with the output. But it doesn't seems to be the case!

-I leave the curve to normal

-A last question It seems like you can't lock the setting. Once you have your setting ready if you extend the cropping area the setting are totally changed, is there a lock setting button somewhere?

It's been great reading that thread so far, hope I'm not bothering you with my question

PS: I played with the dust removal, it does work ok for some shot but you need to check all the output as it does some weird things from time to time. As a shot where someone nose was taken for a spot and another one were the edge of the face was taken for a dust spot... It doesn't smoothen the picture that bad but doesn't either get all the dust out.

PPS: I need to spend more time with this but don't find many evening to do so. I spend 2 hours yesterday sorting a problem which wasn't one. I have an epson 4990 and got some digitaliza film holder for a really good price on ebay recently. If I put the film holder with it's top edge touching the top edge of the scanner (where you would put it to be center and aligned). The picture came out either strippy or totally black. Moving the holder 2 cm down make it work perfectly. After spending a couple of hours trying to sort the heigh of the holder, the scanner setting. I realised the position of the holder was the error.... I can't understand why it is like this because the normal film holder was sitting on top of the scanner without any problem...
 
The normal holders have a couple of little holes that I think relate to the holder in use; this allows the auto thumbnail feature to work (I think)
 
Lemaildetom said:
PS: I played with the dust removal, it does work ok for some shot but you need to check all the output as it does some weird things from time to time. As a shot where someone nose was taken for a spot and another one were the edge of the face was taken for a dust spot... It doesn't smoothen the picture that bad but doesn't either get all the dust out.
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I am presuming that you used a colour image when trying the dust removal? B&W film (apart from C-41 process ones like XP2 Super) block the IR light so the scanner can't tell what is dust/scratches or not, which leads to it usually assuming that everything is and leads to massive global softening. Only on the highest setting will the dust/scratch reduction actually cause any softness.

The effectiveness does highly depend on each individual scanner type and the software used, I've never personally had a problem with my Reflecta ProScan 7200 misidentifying anything and it is overall highly effective (with Vuescan anyway) so I by default just leave it on medium for all my colour shots apart from Kodachrome.
 
Hi

In the picture above I see one error that might be giving problems.

Both negatives have been selected as one image, this might give an error as the scanner is then reading the rebate between the negs as part of the image, you might get better results scanning them as two separate images, you can scan them both at the same time but you select the first neg then hold the alt key and select the second neg and then press the All button and that will scan both negs but produce separate images.

In addition one tip for scanning colour negs is to make sure you select some of the colored rebate as I find it give a much more accurate colour if the rebate is included as it knows that is supposed to be black.

Paul
 
What Paul said - you'll get weird auto-results if you include the black rebate around the image, because it takes into account all that blackness. Draw your box around one image, adjust it until there's no rebate. Then draw another box around the other one, and then alt-click (or is it ctrl-click?) on the first one, and it'll select both for scanning.
 
Ok I'll try this. So from your advices (thanks all).

With black and white:
-Do no includes rebates. (what a shame not to be able to lock the exposure and then extend the crop to includes rebates, I think they look cool sometime and your sure you get the most out of the picture by cropping later on)
-No dust removal.

With colour:
-Includes rebates. (as they are used for colour correction)
-Dust removal to medium.

What do you set for the output sliders?

I think when we'll be up to speed we should try to do a sticky post for everyone. Scanning is a pretty daunting task! But I understand there isn't one solution, everyone has probably different workflow, or should I say hobby-flow I don't like talking of my photographs as my work it's a hobby it has to stay fun!
 
Ooops, I always include the rebate on my B&W scans.........

Very useful thread, thanks for the tips, I will explore these settings a bit further
 
My take on this is that a scanner is basically a big digital camera. Using the auto exposure and colour correction tools in Epson Scan, Vuescan etc. is akin to letting a digital camera process the information it receives at the sensor to create a JPEG. It's something that the software is making a best guess at and giving you something based on the camera manufacturer's taste.

If instead you turn off all the colour correction (configuration > 'no color correction') the scanner should be giving you the raw data from it's sensors. To me this is much more like having a RAW file from a camera, with all the data, nothing clipped, compressed or colour skewed. Like a RAW file, this is likely to look rather flat and require extra processing, which should be carried out in a program suited to that task, such as Photoshop, Lightroom etc.

Once the you have the scanner's 'RAW' file you need to decide whether you want to see the colours that are actually on the emulsion or the colours that the film manufacturer intended you to see after you printed the film onto their paper. If you want the 'film' colours, then you just go ahead and tweak the contrast, exposure etc. in your image editor. If you want to remove the emulsion's inherent colour cast/character/whatever you want to call it, and produce colours similar to a final print, then you need to either manually tweak the colour balance (in Photoshop using curves and the grey point picker, or the colour balance tool) to your liking or use something like ColorPerfect that I mentioned above.

In summary, this is what I do...

For B&W negatives:

1. Do a 'no color correction' scan for B&W negative film (16 bit greyscale)
2. Bring the file into your image editor
3. Tweak the exposure and contrast

For colour negatives (not using ColorPerfect):

1. Do a 'no color correction' scan for colour negative film (48 bit colour)
2. Bring the file into your image editor
3. Tweak the exposure and contrast
4. Tweak the colours using the curves and/or colour balance tool

For colour negatives (using ColorPerfect):

1. Do a 'no color correction' scan for colour positive film (48 bit colour)
2. Bring the file into your image editor
3. Invert the negative using CP and apply the correct emulsion type
4. Fix any clipped highlights and shodows using CP's 'add white' and 'add black' sliders
5. Tweak the exposure and contrast back in Photoshop

The above workflow assumes you have a calibrated scanner (not very important as apparently the colour balance is very good these days, at least from the major manufacturers) and monitor.

The downsides are the extra time and effort, cost of the CP plugin and the inability (at least with Epson Scan) to use Digital ICE.
 
FujiLove said:
The above workflow assumes you have a calibrated scanner (not very important as apparently the colour balance is very good these days, at least from the major manufacturers) and monitor.
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You can't actually calibrate a scanner for colour negative films as the orange mask differs between each film. For slide though you definitely can by using IT-8 targets, and I would highly reccomend using them if you want to get scans similar to the original slides without extensive colour correction. I don't want to open another discussion about IT-8 though as every time it ends up as practically an argument between those who use it and those who don't over whether it's necessary to get good scans. In reality you can get good scans with or without it, but IT-8 makes it much more easier and convenient (when it is used properly).

For colour negative I use the lock exposure and mask colour options on a piece of the film leader (locking the exposure ensures that the maximal shadow detail is captured) in Vuescan to remove the individual orange mask colour, and using those settings then scan the pictures on the roll, making sure that none of the shadows/highlights are clipped (basically as flat as possible) and I don't apply any levels (the 'none' colour mode in Vuescan); I do usually use multi-pass scanning (2-6 passes) as I use a dedicated 35mm scanner that can reposition the head precisely unlike flatbeds and that helps reduce any noise that the scanner may induce.

I then import into Photoshop Elements, adjust each colour channels shadow/highlight levels until just before clipping is introduced, and then introduce some contrast using an S curve (I scan in 16/48 bit colour and try to keep it in 16/48 for as much as possible). I don't usually need to do anything else apart from a small amount of unsharp mask.

For slide the process is near identical, but I always use the same locked exposure value to ensure that the scanner profile adjusts the scan correctly (Vuescan's IT-8 profiling is basic so I used Lprof to create the profile and apply it to the scan afterwards). Aside from adjusting the levels and adding some sharpening that's all I need to get scans very similar to the original slides
 
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