I’ve been enjoying this thread so thanks for making it and sharing your tests!But thanks for chipping in, and I agree with you - this was useful if anything to revisit the humble, built-in color inversion performed by Vuescan, which does a really really good job. Kudos to Mr Hamrick!
err... that's not how it works. You should have detected and reported the 'heavy color casts' before I revealed the labels. Your judgement is now influenced by any implicit bias linked to you now knowing the labels
I’ve been enjoying this thread so thanks for making it and sharing your tests!
I've been experimenting more with ColorPerfect since you revealed the results, albireo. To anyone else who also wants to try it out but is scared off by the UI, check out these couple of videos:
They recommend foregoing any of the color correction stuff, simply setting white/black points to maximize data, and then moving to PS or LR. It's working well for me so far, putting out very flexible positives, even on some very challenging (poorly processed) c-41 negs of mine. Comparing these next to files I inverted with SmartConvert revealed that I have been far too haphazard with clipping when using it.
This is probably obvious to most. In my case, it has highlighted some serious errors I have been making in my color inversions up to this point. And yeah, all of my SmartConvert stuff is completely clipped in the highlights. Crazy I didn't notice it before.
- In my experience colour inversions are something that one needs iterative experience with over time to begin to understand what is going on.
I'm noticing some of my scans have unrecoverable, clipped blacks even before being processed.
Scan as a positive and invert manually. You'll learn some more about what's in your negative. You can then always proceed to whatever convenient way of color balancing, but at least you'll understand what the possibilities are. Spoiler: blacks never look "clipped" on properly scanned color negative film (not even if it's underexposed). The shadows tend to slope off quite gently into black. If you see a hard cut, it's virtually guaranteed to be a scanning error.
Thank you for pointing this out. I too have re-visited my SmartConvert results and indeed, highlight clipping is a problem. I am puzzled by the author not seeing it and asking for samples. It clips highlights every time with 100% reliability. All he needs to do is to compare the output to a manually inverted image.And yeah, all of my SmartConvert stuff is completely clipped in the highlights. Crazy I didn't notice it before.
Mimicking lab scanners, optimizing for speed+volume and not having manual white point control is the stated design goal of SmartConvert.
The clipping is perfectly consistent with Noritsu/Frontier results, at least that's what all labs I've tried gave me. Mimicking lab scanners, optimizing for speed+volume and not having manual white point control is the stated design goal of SmartConvert.
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