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: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:51:09 -0500
That's pretty much the method I use, except I've got a Hell S3900
drum scanner. This may sound like killing fleas with a sledge-hammer
(it was a $165,000 scanner when new), but the inability to scan in 16-
bit on this 1997-vintage scanner means I have to pay better attention
to dynamic range. I usually set the DMax of the film (the highlight
end, since I'm scanning positive) to read about 4%, and the densest
highlight at about 90%, with no other controls. Then I assign the
scanner profile, for what it's worth (not much), judge the results on
a calibrated monitor (an essential item, since scanning negatives is
an almost totally subjective process) and usually assign
ColorMatchRGB if it looks a bit dense, or AdobeRGB if it looks a bit
thin, before inverting it and converting to Grayscale. From there
it's just levels and curves, until I get something that looks "nice".
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
I may have mentioned this in other posts, but I have a background as a
darkroom printer of B&W photography, and I also have a body of
personal work
in B&W -- so this is a subject close to my heart, from both the
technical
and the artistic point of view.
The approach I have to scanning my B&W negatives is the following:
I currently have an Epson V750 Pro scanner. It's not a drum
scanner, but
it's adequate for my current needs, and, most importantly, it is
capable of
scanning in 16 bits.
I scan my negatives as positives in 16 bits, with all scanner
controls off
(no curves, no image controls of any kind). The scan will be "raw,"
so to
speak -- "untreated" and quite flat-looking, but that is not a
reason for
concern.
Next, I open the image in Photoshop.
If the negative's density looks OK on my calibrated and profiled
monitor
after I assign Gamma 2.2 to the image, I leave it that way (I
consider the
density to be OK if the darkest tonalities in the negative look
dark gray
instead of almost-solid black: how dark a gray it should be, that
takes a
bit of experience to be able to evaluate -- this is a rough visual
estimate
at this stage, and requires some experience to get it in a useful
ballpark.
Sorry if I am unable to explain this detail further in this message).
Instead, if the negative should appear dense, even to the point
that I am
having difficulty perceiving detail in all the darkness on the
screen, I
will assign a custom grayscale profile lower than 2.2, all the way
to 1.0,
if necessary, once again until the darkest tonalities start looking
slightly
grayish, instead of black. All of this is based on evaluation by eye,
trusting my display's ability to differentiate blacks from dark
grays. Then
I convert from the assigned gamma (whichever brought out the dark
gray in
the darkest tones) to Gamma 2.2 (via the "Convert to Profile"
command).
NOTE: It is *NOT* advisable to keep working in low-gamma grayscale
work
spaces without converting to Gamma 1.8 or 2.2, since, in my
experience,
low-gamma work spaces create the appearance of banding-like
artifacts on
screen, the more so as one uses gammas that go as low as 1.0, or
near that.
These artifacts are not reflective of actual defects in the file:
they are
just a product of the way the on-the-fly on-screen conversion is
done by
Photoshop via the monitor profile. Nonetheless, they are
disturbing, and I
prefer to work in a more well-behaved gamma space, like Gamma 2.2
(which is
close to the gamma I use in my monitor profile). That way, the
artifacts
will not stand in the way of evaluating the image.
After I convert to Gamma 2.2 (which is the one I prefer), I add an
Invert
adjustment layer to the image, which will now look positive, though
usually
very light. Next, I find the darkest and lightest points *in the
image*
(using the Threshold command) and tag them with the color sampler
tool. I
completely disregard the film base, since the tonalities in the
image will
depend on the density *in the image area*, not in the base.
Next, I use a Curves adjustment layer to set the black and white
points in
the areas that I marked earlier. After that, I use the same (or an
additional) Curves layer to "shape" the tonalities in the image,
until it
starts looking like I intend it to look.
So, basically, I bypass considerations of profiling altogether. To
recap,
the scan I make is in grayscale, in 16 bits, with all scanner image
controls
turned off.
The image treatment in Photoshop is based not on profiling the file
itself,
but simply on trusting the display's ability to show me realistic
tonalities. This requires a carefully-calibrated and -profiled
display.
Also, scanning in 16 bits and keeping the file that way until the
final
print allows me to apply the strong adjustments required with this
method
without fear of losing useful tonalities, which would be an ever-
present
risk if I worked in 8 bits. Instead the final result shows no
banding or
posterization, because in 16 bits I still retain plenty of tonal
steps even
after all my edits.
That's basically the core of my technique. I have been able to make
prints
that I deem as good or better than those that I made 15 to 20 years
ago in
the darkroom from the same negs. The amount of tweaking left to do
to the
image file to get a good-looking print using the Advanced Black &
White
controls in the K3 Epson printers is usually minimal.
Marco Ugolini
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