copying colour negs

G'day all,

In lieu of a film scanner I have been copying 6x9 colour negs with my DSLR.

Is there any quick and dirty means by which I can remove the orange mask in PS?

do a white balance before you shoot

invert the image, using photoshop curves tool auto balance (play with the clipping amounts until the highlights are not blown out. The image may now be light w/ a slight cyan cast fix this by adding magenta and yellow until the cyan is gone and the colour looks neutral. adjust density either by using the global curve or on convert to LAB and adjust density and contrast with the L channel.

Copy a clear frame to get a copy of the orange mask. In PS Filter->Blur->Average. Save this image, let's call it fix.

Open the file needing the correction. Control-I to invert color.
You then paste or place 'fix' on a layer above the image layer. Change the blend mode of 'fix' to Color Burn.

This is easy to convert to an action. The 'fix' file will work the best with that roll. Next best with that type of film.

This is based on the assumption that all the 'scans' are done with the same light source, the same white balance setting, and same exposure setting.

thnx guys

excellent ideas, David and JD the attached is a rough attempt at a combination of your methods

Michael, I've yet to try your technique but I did kind of think that PS must have some kind of merge/cancel colour function, i'll give it a go

guys, in reality this an old film (20years?) exposed in a homemeade pinhole camera, so the colours, contrast etc are somewhat random anyway, but quite inspiring as these are my first attempts at colour pinhole

note the "fogging" in the centre of the image, i didn't blacken the bare metal after i made the pinhole, amazing that such a small amount of light could bounce around inside the camera and cause fogging

the streak on the bottom edge is not on the neg, it must have come through the glass i placed on top

Hi Ray

generally no specific technique is needed to get rid of the "orange mask", inversion and leveling will clear it up.

Just keep in mind that the density levels for R G and B are not equal.



I use my flatbed scanner as positive and just invert and adjust levels, works out perfectly

http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2009/10/quick-negative-scan-tutorial.html

should do the same with the DSLR too