Is this something lab related?

zehner21 · Sep 9, 2014

Hi to all.
I came back yesterday from a trip and today I sent three films to the lab for having them developed and print.
It's a 1-hour-photo lab because I wanted to make my mother happy

When I picked up the photos, I got very frustrated. It seems that every single image has a slight yellow tint.

Examples:

RA-4 scanned at home ---> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60233250/IMG_20140909_0018.tif

negative scan ----> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60233250/alberto00013.jpg

Can someone explain me why are these two so different? I don't think it's only a matter of monitor calibrating/scanner/etc. because I'm having the same EXACT results as I'm using Kodacolor/C200/cheap

darkosaric · Sep 9, 2014

Hi, questions: RA-4 print was done in lab or you did it yourself, and also scan was done by you or by lab?

ME Super · Sep 9, 2014

The scan of the RA-4 print looks good IMHO - the T-shirt is white, and the columns on the building are white. The negative scan does look yellow, but should be easy to correct d:g:tally. An auto-white balance in GIMP (free open-source software that has a lot of the functionality of PhotoShop) will probably fix the negative scan.

zehner21 · Sep 9, 2014

@darkosaric : the scan was made by me, while printing was made by the lab

ME Super said:
The scan of the RA-4 print looks good IMHO - the T-shirt is white, and the columns on the building are white. The negative scan does look yellow, but should be easy to correct d:g:tally. An auto-white balance in GIMP (free open-source software that has a lot of the functionality of PhotoShop) will probably fix the negative scan.

Maybe it's just a problem of memory: until now, I was quite sure that the statue was yellowish due to the sunset.

Anyway thank you.

P.S. how does auto-white balance work?

AgX · Sep 9, 2014

zehner21 said:
Maybe it's just a problem of memory: until now, I was quite sure that the statue was yellowish due to the sunset.

That's why the Grey-Card (and alternative means) was invented...

Or in other words, you need a useful reference either within your photograph or by means of an additional photograph.
In any case representing the light-colour of the scene-lighting.

If your reproduction of that reference is filtered to its original state, with the same filtration all colours will be reproduced as best as possible too.

Wallendo · Sep 9, 2014

The issue with this photo is that there are two distinct light sources. The person is in shadow and the statue in direct sunlight. The scan of the print appears to be properly balanced because the highlights are blown (there is no detail in the statue) and this gives it a white appearance.

If done at a one-hour photo, the print was probably created from a scan of the image and digitally manipulated before printing.

I suspect the image scan more accurately represents the image in the negative, although that scan seems to have been shifted towards yellow, probably to balance out the blue that tends to develop in shadow areas.

Prof_Pixel · Sep 9, 2014

Machine color printing color negatives involves making many assumptions about the colors in a picture and the algorithms used are far from perfect (but they are much better than they were 20 years ago).

darkosaric · Sep 10, 2014

But in any case you should be happy - nothing is wrong with your negatives, they are developed ok .

zehner21 · Mar 3, 2015

Quick Update:
I optically printed the negative and it's quite different from the lab's print. Now I'm satisfied. Thank you all

Is this something lab related?

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