colour negative scanning

I cannot seem to get LR3 to correct flat scans from my V600. However, on auto, Elements 8 works great. How do you guys use LR to adjust?

well speaking from my experience in black and white, I am importing a negative with pretty low contrast (as much image info as possible) into LR3 so normally I will bump the contrast up to 100 to start. From there the Blacks slider handles the black point (use alt to see clipping) and the exposure slider kind of handles the white point though it does make everything lighter but mainly in the highs (again use alt to see clipping). There is a slider called recovery which will cut only the tones near the white point, and a slider called fill light which increases the brightness of the tones just above black. Then there is an overall brightness slider near contrast, and a slider called clarity that adjusts local contrast. You can usually get very close with just these, but for fine adjustments you can then edit the image curve, either manually or by using a tool which lets you click on the tone you want to change and then drag the mouse to adjust up or down. For dodging and burning type actions or other touch ups there is an adjustment brush and a graduated filter tool - both of these have a range of adjustments you can choose from. And the spot removal tool is great.

But if someone here knows lightroom well I would love to know if I can make all the colour adjustments I need in lightroom or if I need to bother learning how to do that in photoshop. Thanks!

Is there a auto adjust in LR for color negatives or must you only use the sliders? In ELements there is Auto-Levels which really does a great job. But sometime it will clip. IS there a way of adjusting the autoLevel to prevent that?

I use Lightroom only for raw images from my digital cameras. I don't find it fast enough or convenient enough for editing scanned images. I do use LR to catalog the finished scans however. All my scan work is done in Photoshop.

that is interesting to hear - maybe I should start to learn more about photoshop - what specifically is faster and more convenient?

thanks!

The ability to create multiple layers is very convenient. You can create a curves layer to adjust the endpoints and gamma for each channel in Photoshop in order to fix the color. Then create second curves layer to adjust the overall contrast of the image independent of the color curves. You can do all this in LR, but it gets a bit kludgy with multiple curves. I also find that for the amount of spotting required on a typical scan that Lightroom really bogs down with large format scans. Also the masking tools in Photoshop are much more advanced than in LR.

I recommend you download a trial version of Photoshop and try a few common operations in both packages. The problem with that approach is that Photoshop has a steep learning curve, and many ways to accomplish the same thing. But feel free to ask for best practices here. I can at least tell you how I handle things (even if they may not be the best).

okay thanks a lot. I do own PS CS4 so I guess I can fool around with it. I have never looked into doing much with it.

For LR I was just importing the scan in and adjusting the overall colour using white balance and then fine tuning any individual colour with the Hue adjustment tool. That avoids curves altogether but maybe it's not the best way? I don't know much about adjusting curves from a colour standpoint.

If your scanner gets you close then Lightroom may be all you need for color balance. I really like the interface in LR, but find for most scans from my scanner that it doesn't work too well. I still think spotting the scan will be better done in Photoshop, even if that's all you use it for. But give it a try; it won't cost a thing if you own it already.

my workflow for scanning is pretty good so I usually don't have to do much spotting. the one time I did have to do a bunch (over 100 separate fixes easily) I did the spotting, then exported the file as a full size tiff, then reimported that back into lightroom, which fixed the slowness issue problem.

I will however look into PS for colour channel curve adjustments!

The good thing about working with layers is that you aren't actually adjusting the underlying data. So undo is as simple as removing the layer.

Personally I do as much as possible with layers, then save that pad file. I only flatten when ready. Layers for level adjustments can be sat alongside layers with curves and then hue. I generally don't apply curves to each channel (R,G,B) but do give each channel a little tweak with gamma adjustment to suit their characteristics.

As I have no experience with LR I can't make any comments on why Photoshop is better.