Re: Black and white negative scanning
Re: Black and white negative scanning
- Subject: Re: Black and white negative scanning
- From: Chris Protopapas <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:40:43 -0500
The big advantage of a drum scanner is the increased sensitivity to
light, which helps a lot in scanning transparencies that have deep
shadow detail. Negatives have a much more resrtricted dynamic range,
which means you have a better chance on a flatbed to capture
everything you need as compared to scanning a transparency. So a
flatbed is not too bad in that respect. The key is to scan the
negatives rather flat, but with the complete dynamic range as regards
the end points. Get your black in the image as black as you gan
without clipping, same for the highlights (ignoring specular
highlights of course) and worry about the contrast in Photoshop. A
bit of levels to fine tune the end points and to set the mid-tone,
then curves to finish it off. It's a craft, like printing in the
darkroom. If you find it's easier to scan as a positive, that's fine,
inverting in Photoshop works well. If in RGB, you can sometimes get
better results by assigning Colormatch RGB before inverting, rather
than AdobeRGB. I'm not sure if you can assign an RGB profile
(AdobeRGB) to a grayscale image.
Chris Protopapas
************
email@hidden
Fuel Digital Inc.
902 Broadway, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10010
P 212-564-4646 F 212-564-2131
www.fueldigitalinc.com
On Nov 13, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Ludovico Fischer wrote:
Yes I suspected as much regarding the usefulness a scanner profile in
this case. What you say about the D-max sound very reasonable It seems
not much work is being done in the area of black and white film
scanning, it's becoming really an 'art' type market, I guess.
Information is difficult to come by. Probably the biggest limitation
quality-wise comes from using a flatbed, anyway. I still wonder what the
effect of using AdobeRGB on a grayscale image is, though I can convert
that to 20% dot grain.
Ludovico Fischer
On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 15:38 -0500, Chris Protopapas wrote:
Generally speaking it is impossible to profile negative scans. The
reasons are fairly simple: color management, the creation of profiles,
needs a fixed target to work on. Transparencies and reflective art
fits that definition, but negatives generally do not. The negative,
whether B&W or color, is not the final image, but merely a means to an
end. Negatives will often vary enormously in exposure and contrast.
This is much worse with color negatives, but B&W are subject to the
same variation. In the same fashion that a printer cannot be
successfully profiled if it is constantly drifting, negatives cannot
be profiled, except in an extremely loose way. For example, I use my
drum scanner's transparency setting to scan B&W negatives, and then
assign the transparency profile (in RGB) to yield a negative image
which can then be inverted to produce a positive image, but the role
of the scanner profile is not essential; it's just part of my
workflow. That has more to do with my 1997 drum scanner's software
being unable to easily produce a positive scan than anything else. The
software for an Epson scanner should be able to produce decent B&W
scans. First set your black point in the DMax of the negative; that
will give you a black that cannot be lighter than anything in the live
image. This is very important, but you will soon notice that different
negatives will yield different results. This is because there is no
neccesary relationship between the unexposed film and the shadow areas
of your image, unlike a properly exposed positive, where the DMax is
very close to a true black in the live image. A negative can be
overexposed, still be printable, but the shadow areas will have much
more exposure than the DMax. This is one reason why negatives cannot
be profiled; the black point is not consistent, and constistent
conditions are the pre-condition for color management. Diffrences in
processing, and different film stocks, will affect the contrast of the
image differently, again making profiling impossible. That said,
scanning B&W negatives is easier than scanning color negatives, where
there are even more variables. In reference to your other questions,
16-bit is a good thing if your original scan is very flat, and you
need to do major work in Photoshop. As far as grayscale profiles, I
use 20% dot gain, but other profiles will work as well. It dosn't hurt
to provide a tagged file to a printer.
Chris Protopapas
************
email@hidden
Fuel Digital Inc.
902 Broadway, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10010
P 212-564-4646 F 212-564-2131
www.fueldigitalinc.com
Message: 14
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:51:56 +0100
From: Ludovico Fischer <email@hidden>
Subject: Black and white negative scanning
To: ColorSync List <email@hidden>
Message-ID: <1194958316.5630.20.camel@gogo>
Content-Type: text/plain
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
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