Hybrid workflow for 35mm film: Interested in a workflow discussion/Photoshop tutorial?

[Andreas Thaler]

Hi, thanks for sharing this.

You are welcome

You are doing a lot of post processing after the already processed output of NLP.

I don't use NLP (I don't use or need Adobe Lightroom) but I thought you pay for NLP (and pay dearly) for it to give you a usable, and sometimes bang-on inversion out of the box and spare you the need for further lengthy processing?

Negative Lab Pro (NLP) does this, in my opinion the best of all the conversion programs I've seen.

However, it always depends on your personal taste whether you're happy with the default settings. Therefore, you can customize the conversion in NLP. This works very well.

However, since I always edit all my photos in Photoshop, I use NLP's default settings and then adjust them in Photoshop. This saves a lot of time, since you can apply NLP in batch mode.

If post-processing is something you enjoy or master (I don't) why not simply manually invert using the curves (e.g. Koraks' method), and then tweak as above?

Working with gradation curves in Photoshop is a delicate matter.

Converting color negatives doesn't happen at the push of a button; it requires some practice.

My results with the curves weren't as good as those achieved with NLP.

The software offers more than just conversion. You can tell by the color scheme or the way shadows are drawn.

I'm happy with it and can continue working from a very good template.

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Whether one should edit photos, especially digitally captured ones, is a long-standing debate. It depends on what you want.

I usually select only a few pictures from a 36-exposure 35mm film roll to edit. The rest is scanned with VueScan and the automatic settings for the archive.

My only concern is having an overview. These days, it produces very good results.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

What I particularly like about Photoshop is that it doesn't dictate anything. Everyone can choose the techniques and tools that suit them and put together their own personal workflow.

There are different approaches to many tasks, none of which is better or worse; only the result counts.

You can do it quickly or slowly, with little or a lot of effort.

However, the learning curve in Photoshop is longer than with workflow programs like Lightroom or DXO, which already have predefined processes.

There, too, you can now edit selectively, but not as precisely and comprehensively as with the old Photoshop toolbox, the cloud version of which is constantly updated.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

In my opinion, Photoshop is now an almost complete toolbox for photo editing. I hardly need any additional software anymore.

Fifteen years ago, things were different; there was a lively programming scene developing plug-ins for sharpening, correcting color fringing, or converting color photos to black and white. But some have stayed with me, like PTLens.

Adobe's policy of preserving old tools like Levels, Channel Mixer, or Channel Calculations across versions is also very nice. This allows workflows and created actions for automatically processing multiple editing steps in succession to be retained. This way, skills acquired once are not lost, even if the program now offers more powerful or easier-to-use tools.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

White balance with a gray reference in the image

Color casts in image files can be easily eliminated in Photoshop by using a gray reference in the image.

This could be a gray card taken with the subject, a gray concrete wall, a piece of road, or any other detail considered a neutral gray.

To do this, I use the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop, which has become a full-fledged image editing tool.

Under "Color", I select the eyedropper for white balance and click on a gray area in the image.

The original image with a strong grenish color cast.

Clicking on one of the concrete blocks with the eyedropper results in an improvement.

However, there's too much red in the image.

Using the Blue/Yellow and Green/Magenta controls, you can filter the image until it achieves a pleasing color reproduction without any color cast.

Your own eye and taste are the reference points here.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

Things get more difficult when there's no gray reference in the image, for example, in nature shots.


White balance without a gray reference in the image

I just learned an interesting technique for correcting color casts in such photos here:

Adobe Photoshop: Das umfassende Standardwerk zur Bildbearbeitung. Über 1.000 Seiten geballtes Wissen zu Ihrer Adobe-Software (neue Auflage 2023) : Mühlke, Sibylle, Wolf, Jürgen: Amazon.de: Bücher

Adobe Photoshop: Das umfassende Standardwerk zur Bildbearbeitung. Über 1.000 Seiten geballtes Wissen zu Ihrer Adobe-Software (neue Auflage 2023) : Mühlke, Sibylle, Wolf, Jürgen: Amazon.de: Bücher

www.amazon.de

Here is a landscape photo from Lower Austria, north of Vienna.

Here, too, there is a yellowish color cast caused by a scanning problem.

A new layer is created.

"Difference" is selected as the layer mode.

"Fill area" fills the layer with 50 % gray.

The photo now looks interesting

A “Threshold” adjustment layer is added to the layer stack.

The slider for the corresponding histogram is dragged all the way to the left, the image becomes white.

Now the slider is slowly pulled to the right until black areas appear in the image.

A control point (color checker tool) is placed on one of these black areas.

The created layer with the gray fill and the "Threshold" adjustment layer are deleted or deactivated.

A "Curves" or "Levels" adjustment layer is created.

With the midtone layer in the adjustment field, click exactly on the previously set measurement point.

The greenish tint has been eliminated, but the shadow areas show too much red.

The red color channel is selected and the gradation curve is adjusted.

With a little experimentation, you can quickly achieve a good result.

Using the blue channel and adjusting the corresponding gradation curve, the image can be further improved until it is satisfactory.

Here is the original image again for comparison.


I hope that the Photoshop tools and settings discussed here are correctly translated from German to English

 

[Andreas Thaler]

Erratum:

With the midtone layer in the adjustment field, click exactly on the previously set measurement point.

With the midtone pipette …

 

[Andreas Thaler]

Color corrections in Photoshop: Orientation on the color wheel

Color correction is a common task in Photoshop. Either because you want to remove color casts or change color tones.

File:Farbkreis.png - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

Understanding these corrections is based on the color wheel.

We encounter its principle frequently in Photoshop, for example:

Channel mixer adjustment layer.

Color balance adjustment layer.

Color grading in the Camera Raw filter.


To make targeted color corrections it's best to use the color wheel as a guide.

Two things are helpful to know here:

1. Each color on the color wheel has a complementary color opposite it. These are green to magenta, yellow to blue, and red to cyan.
   For example, a magenta tint can be corrected with a higher green component, and vice versa.
2. If three colors are adjacent, the middle color is formed by the other two. So magenta can be created from red and blue.

With this knowledge, we can now adjust the sliders on the color correction tools and are not dependent on chance when trying things out.

Let’s take a look at this knight, who is located at Vienna City Hall:

A yellow tint is noticeable in the image.

To correct it, I created a "Color Balance" adjustment layer.

The six colors of the color wheel are visible in the three sliders of the adjustment palette.

The color wheel is to the right for orientation.

To reduce the yellow component in the image, I look on the color wheel to see what the complementary color is. This is blue.

There's also a slider that contains exactly this color pair.

So I drag the slider slightly toward the blue range.

The yellow tint disappears.

I correct a slight reddish tint with the red - cyan slider and remove some green with magenta, the third slider.

The colors in this photo could use some more work, but I'm happy with the result.

The white balance for the image is set.

Alternatively, and not quite as convenient as using a single slider before, you can also remove the yellow cast reducing the two colors that make up yellow.

In the color wheel, these are red and green, which I'm reducing here.

The man in armor has improved

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The reference for these adjustments is the eye.

If you want an exact white balance, you can photograph a gray card set in the picture that represents neutral gray.

You can then adjust the white balance in Photoshop using this, for example, the white balance eyedropper in the Color Raw filter; see the thread for details.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

Long story short, you can photograph a color checker (this could be something like an IT8 target), run it through the entire process (i.e. develop the film, scan it and then do e.g. a linear inversion) and then use the digital output to construct an ICC profile. So basically you would treat much of the processing as a black box and profile it in an end-to-end kind of way. A digital camera could be profiled in the same way. A free software suite to do this with is ArgyllCMS, which doesn't excel in user-friendliness, but it's really powerful. And free.

Interesting article:

http://www.hutchcolor.com/PDF/Cneg.pdf

 

[koraks]

That's a rather crude summary of the topic, Although some of the objections put forth I also agree with. If you search the Forum you may find some posts of mine where I discuss these.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

Interesting article:

http://www.hutchcolor.com/PDF/Cneg.pdf

For profiling digital cameras, I use the Colorchecker Passport 2 (still from Xrite). Maybe I can use it for color film, too, and tinker a bit.

ColorChecker Passport Photo 2 - Calibrite - United States

An essential tool for any imagemaker when working in different lighting situations Utilises standard 24-patch ColorChecker target, enhancement target, Gray balance and White balance targets. Target works seamlessly with Calibrite PROFILER software featuring the Camera Calibration module to offer...

calibrite.com

 

[Andreas Thaler]

That's a rather crude summary of the topic,

What do you mean specifically?

 

[koraks]

You could; it'll boil down to a manual approach with visual color matching. With ArgyllCMS you should be able to automate this, although no guarantees of a really functional ICC profile.

 

[koraks]

What do you mean specifically?

I might type out the long story at some point but not now.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

I might type out the long story at some point but not now.

Then please be so kind as not to disparage other people's work without reason. That doesn't help anyone.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

If you search the Forum you may find some posts of mine where I discuss these.

Does this summarize your argument on the topic?

All over the place – The problem with color negative film scans – Koraks tinkers

tinker.koraks.nl

 

[Andreas Thaler]

You could; it'll boil down to a manual approach with visual color matching. With ArgyllCMS you should be able to automate this, although no guarantees of a really functional ICC profile.

This is definitely interesting for a pragmatic approach.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

What I discovered after extensive research on the web is that the topic of color management with color negative film occupies some people, but there is no ready-made solution. There are some workarounds, some approaches, solutions for each single film and lighting.

The most accurate statement to me is that color negative film is intended for the interpretation of color.

This also corresponds to the practice in the darkroom of individually filtering color negative film for positive production.

If you are unsure about this, reach for slide film and hopefully the targets you have for profiling the scanner.

Slides have always been the last resort of the color photographer who projected their images. What the printer or the lab then did with them was no longer under their control.

I would like to keep it that way for my application as well. If I want to be color-accurate, I use a digital camera, which I can profile (Colorchecker passport 2).

 

[koraks]

Then please be so kind as not to disparage other people's work without reason. That doesn't help anyone.

I have reason to be critical of the contents of that pdf. I just don't have the time or inclination to explain in depth now. The gist of it is that the conditions which the author of the odd considers as dealbreakers need not be in practice. It depends on the use case. And there's also the chance of experiencing utility of even an imperfect profile; it's a bit like shooting a digicam on fixed daylight white balance.

And no, the blog you linked to doesn't address this issue.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

What I find interesting is that the current version of Photoshop has a lot of AI, which is very helpful for retouching, for example, but no application for intelligent automatic color correction (did I miss this?).

Until that happens, we as users still have to adjust the controls

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What I'd also like to discuss is the gradation curve for selective color correction.

Today in Vienna, I took some shots with the Canon PowerShot G5 X, which we can use to see how this works. Whether the material comes from a digital camera or a scanner shouldn't matter for this purpose

 

[koraks]

Until that happens, we as users still have to adjust the controls

I thought the whole point was that the colors were open to interpretation to begin with?

 

[4season]

For profiling digital cameras, I use the Colorchecker Passport 2 (still from Xrite). Maybe I can use it for color film, too, and tinker a bit.

I previously tried photographing Colorchecker Passport on film, scanning, saving as DNG, and running the result through the camera profile creator software, but this resulted in an error message.

Fortunately, I've gotten pretty good at color negative reversal using Silverfast AI Studio, then making final adjustments using the RGB curves controls in Lightroom, enough so that I felt I was getting results comparable to that using Negative Lab Pro.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

I thought the whole point was that the colors were open to interpretation to begin with?

We have two topics here: Photoshop, including color correction, and color management in color negative film.

These two topics are not interdependent; in other words, color correction will always exist, and color management does not protect against color casts. These have nothing to do with different color spaces and their interrelationships.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

I previously tried photographing Colorchecker Passport on film, scanning, saving as DNG, and running the result through the camera profile creator software, but this resulted in an error message.

Thank you, that saves me a disappointment

Fortunately, I've gotten pretty good at color negative reversal using Silverfast AI Studio, then making final adjustments using the RGB curves controls in Lightroom, enough so that I felt I was getting results comparable to that using Negative Lab Pro.

As the trained pianist Ansel Adams said, the negative is the score that must be interpreted

Speaking of which, I must finally tackle this book:

The Digital Zone System: Taking Control from Capture to Print : Fisher, Robert: Amazon.de: Bücher

The Digital Zone System: Taking Control from Capture to Print : Fisher, Robert: Amazon.de: Bücher

www.amazon.de

There is an ongoing debate among photographers whether digital photography processes will ever be able to reach the pinnacle of image quality and tonality achieved by Ansel Adams decades ago. The Digital Zone System (DZS) is an innovative methodology for editing digital images that mimics the Zone System created by Adams.

ibid.

Then a new thread comes.

 

[4season]

Thank you, that saves me a disappointment

I'm not saying that it can't be done, only that it didn't work for me, and I don't know why.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

I'm not saying that it can't be done, only that it didn't work for me, and I don't know why.

Maybe the color checker software only accepts raw files from digital cameras or converted to DNG?