This is a great tutorial that is clear and concise while also explaining the reasoning behind the choices well, much better than other ones that are like "Well it worked for me" or "Just buy Negative Lab Pro!"
I have just begun to digitize my negatives and ran into the blue/cyan colorcast in them. It was helpful to hear you say that is a common problem and not something going wrong in my conversion. Thanks for this very helpful video.
Excellent tutorial. I'm so grateful RU-vid still pushes this video 4 years later. In just one go I was able to correct my photo for free (albeit with Photo Shop owned). Extremely useful information with no annoying sponsorships, amazingly straightforward, and easy to follow in a much more modern version of the software.
Great tutorial, thanks! I was using a very similar technique some 25 years ago while working on a project which had a zillion negs for a scan (usually, 6x6 positives were the most common job for our drum). It was an enormous time saver to scan them as RGB negs on Screen 1045AI and convert them in PhotoShop, then to scan them as CMYK positives.
Thank you toooo much. I’ve just jumped from dslr to slr to dive into the magic of film colours...but twisted with how to add the negatives. You helped me a lot. Thank you again...for the excellent job and for sharing experience.
Great video. For the most part, this is how I edit my images from my color negative film, but I've never tried that first step. I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
Thanks, I worked with a Linhof Technica from 1974 till the mid 90's. I also have alot of 35mm film from before then. This will come in handy as I've always put off converting this work & am now retired with time to spend.
Alex this looks great. I have given up on doing my own color scanning a while back but recently decided to pull out my old Epson 4490 and have been playing with a few different methods. I tried this method on a RAW scan and the color looks great except that I am getting some serious banding. Is there something I should watch out for or do you think this may be because of the scanner? I'll have to try out a few different methods.
Great tutorial. I will be looking forward to using these tips when I finish my first roll of Ektar 100. If you have any tips on how to edit scans from color slides, especially the new Ektachrome E100 that would be super helpful. I’m struggling on a good workflow that I’m happy with.
This is a great tutorial but I’d like to be able to do the same thing in Lightroom. Do you know if there’s a keyboard shortcut to check clipping with the individual channels in Lightroom?
When you said color negative film is too blue- well the film base is orange and orange is the inverse of blue. Is this a question of not compensating enough for the film base? Or is this just a coincidence? Also I've always wondered why when you photograph a negative you have a histogram that covers the entire tonal range but when you invert it you have a new histogram that only covers about half of the tonal range. Is this the way it will always work or is this a quirk of the software?
Thanks! B&W is much easier since you're not worrying about color. All you need is to invert the image and then add contrast to taste with a single curves layer. If the film has a bit of a color to it (which it often does) then desaturate it with a hue/sat layer.
Great video, I really love the methodical nature of your approach! One question though: Why do you subtract the film border before raising the levels of each separate color channel? Won't the act of treating them differently after the white balance undermine some of the objectivity of the balance?
Thanks for watching! That's a good question. Mostly it's because the subtraction of the film base works mostly to help with the shadow point and shadow color cast, while also giving a better starting point for the image as a whole. It also significantly darkens the entire image so it's necessary to bring the white points over individually afterwards, and doing the color channels separately gives us better control over the general color of the image.
Kind of a follow-up question to this one, do you always use the same base color to be subtracted or does it vary per film stock or even from a photo to the other from the same roll based on how it was shot?
You certainly could. I generally find that by deleting the film base the shadows have a pretty good color set, so I just mess with the general contrast curve instead. Either method is acceptable.
@@EddoPanamenyo thanks! Yeah this video was to get you the 90% there file. From there luminosity masks and minor tweaks could get you to nearly match the drum scan. Maybe I'll make more videos like this in the future
This is an old version of photoshop, cs5. The gray background throws some people off, but you can do all this in the newer versions. Similar adjustments should be possible in other software too as curves are quite common.
@@AlexBurke Yes everythings in the right order, but I tried it completely without that layer and made a correction of the shadows and highlights in every colorlayer and it seems to work alright. Im just confused why the orange-mask-removal wont work properly with the subtraction...
You will have to manually set the black point by going into each channel in a curves layer the same way I did with highlights. Moving forward, you may want to consider modifying one of your holders so that a small bit of border appears to use as reference. For example, a notch could be cut into the holder to expose some border.
@@AlexBurke thank you for answering:) I can not modify the holders. the scanner is property of my university (Folkwang university of arts). Each holder costs more than 200€ :/
Hey, Alex. Just tried your technique but I don't really know what to make of the picking of the blue color. In your shot here you are basically picking the blue somewhere in the white parts of the clouds. But what if there are no clouds in your shot? Which part of the negative should be sampled?
I think the eye dropper was confusing - he seemed to pick from the "blank" space of the negative, where it wasn't exposed. To get the actual colour of the film itself - and then he cancels it out with the subtract blending mode :)
Just found out that in Photoshop CC 2018, in Adjustments, Curves in Preset you choose Color Negative and voilà you get a positive. Guess other versions of PS have this too. Problem solved!
