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Re: Scanning b&w negatives


Hello. I want to scan some black and white film negatives with a epson
v700 flatbed, for archival purpose.I imagine it would be practical to
scan them as 16 bit grayscale TIFF, as the files will be smaller and
there is no need for tinting or such effects. I am asking myself:
-is there a way to profile the scanner for such media? Given the nature
of negatives, are there benefits in doing so? Is there a benefit, for
example, in using a profile made with a IT8 target printed on reversal
film ?
- What do I use as a working space profile? I've heard about 'grayscale
icc profiles', but I can't find much information (except stuff refering
to Photoshop 5). What are these? Or do I use a profile such as AdobeRGB?
-same thing for final output. Is there a benefit in attaching an icc
profile to a grayscale image for viewing in color managed applications?
Would that be a regular color profile or one of these 'grayscale
profiles'? And if I print such an image? Do the printers expect to have
an icc profile with a grayscale image?

I'm sorry if the questions are really off the mark. Thank you,

Ludovico Fischer

Hi Ludovico,

I wouldn't bother with the approach just suggested. I don't need to speculate on this as I've scanned thousands of negatives, both on flatbeds and drum scanners. Profiles are of limited value here because negatives vary too much in density and contrast to make profiling the scanner practical. Besides, the only thing you could really "profile" is density range and contrast, or gamma, and that always gets heavily readjusted anyway. In general, the approach is to set the scanner's range wide enough to record both ends of the tonal scale, and the gamma to somewhere between 2.2 and 2.8 (experiment with this because this may be defined differently in different drivers) and scan as a positive. In Photoshop, convert the scan to Gray Gamma 2.2, invert and begin adjusting the contrast in Levels and fine-tune in Curves. Your image is now tagged, so further conversions will have a basis. I know this seems a casual approach, but keep in mind that it doesn't matter so much how you start out so long as you don't clip either shadows or highlights and the image does get tagged before editing and converting. Also keep in mind that low-end scanners like the Epsons have no way to alter the analog signal before digitizing, so there's not much point in narrowing your density range in the driver as opposed to doing so in Photoshop's Levels later on. All this said, it does take a lot of finesse to produce beautiful grayscale scans from negs, so start practicing.

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