Some background
Digitizing old slides or negatives is a time consuming and sometimes frustrating task. Over the years I have tried to convert my slides and old color negatives by using different approaches. I used a Nikon Coolscan which was good but slow. When it broke beyond repair and Nikon did not manufacture scanners anymore, I switched to a Canon flatbed scanner and Silverfast software. Silverfast gives nice scanning results but is also slow and has a really horrible user interface. A year ago I started copying slides with my Nikon D700, a macro lens and a Nikon Film Digitizing adapter (ES-2). As light-source I use a Nikon flash unit or daylight. This works very well, the results are better than those of my scanners. And you get RAW files to start with.
For color negatives there is an extra problem: you have to do the conversion from negative to positive in Photoshop. I have read a lot about it on the internet but unfortunately many solutions are quite complex and most of them need a sample of the unexposed film. Given the fact that the film holders have frames that cover exactly 36 * 24 mm this is not very practical. Also this makes it difficult to automate the process in an action.
Why two actions?
As negative color films have much more tolerances than digital technology (different brands, large exposure tolerances, different color rendering etc.), almost every conversion process will need some manual tweaking. Both action address the problem in a different way leading to slightly different results.
Action 1 does not use an inverted orange mask. It will give good results if the picture contains a neutral grey point. In many cases after the action has run you will have to set a grey point in an extra Curves layer manually.
Action 2 calculates an average color for the orange mask. This method gives well balanced conversion, which looks a bit cooler.
Both actions use Camera RAW as a starting point.
Please make sure to set Camera RAW to 16 bit and uncheck the "Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects"
The settings can be accessed by clicking the link at the bottom of the screen. (Between Save Image... and Open Image)
Before running the actions the negative must be in a layer called "Background" and this must be the only layer.
Action 1 does not use an inverted orange mask. It will give good results if the picture contains a neutral grey point. In many cases after the action has run you will have to set a grey point in an extra Curves layer manually.
Action 2 calculates an average color for the orange mask. This method gives well balanced conversion, which looks a bit cooler.
Both actions use Camera RAW as a starting point.
Please make sure to set Camera RAW to 16 bit and uncheck the "Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects"
The settings can be accessed by clicking the link at the bottom of the screen. (Between Save Image... and Open Image)
Before running the actions the negative must be in a layer called "Background" and this must be the only layer.
Action 1
To illustrate the process and have a kind of color reference I made a number of pictures with two cameras. A Nikon D700 digital camera (with 50mm lens) and my 40 year old Nikon F with Fujicolor C200, also with a 50mm lens. A journey back in time.
In the file below you find the results and also an in depth explanation of how to use this action.
In the file below you find the results and also an in depth explanation of how to use this action.
collour_negative_to_positive_whitout_samplig_the_orange_mask.pdf | |
File Size: | 2245 kb |
File Type: |
In short :
- Open the negative file in Camera Raw
- Straighten and Crop away borders
- In Camera RAW set White balance to Auto, click Open Image
- Run PCN Action 1
- If needed set a grey point in the fine-tune curves layer and slightly adjust saturation and brightness
Action 2
Action 2 is embarrassing simple. It only uses 5 extra layers.
In short:
- Open the negative file in Camera Raw
- Straighten and Crop away borders
- In Camera RAW set White balance to Auto
- Run PCN Action 2
- If needed adjust the Opacity of the Inverted Orange Mask layer. If there is a remaining color cast, set white and/or grey point with the Curves layer
- Also tweak Saturation and Brightness