Photoshop action for scanning old color negative

MFstooges · May 27, 2024

I am still using Photoshop CS2. I am looking for an action or plug in to scan old color negative. I spend a lot of time color correcting and still doesn't come right. I can't get rid of the purplish hue and if I try to compensate it will throw all the other color balance off.
Or is there an alternative cheaper software for reconstructing from old color negs?

koraks · May 27, 2024

All color negatives degrade in their own unique way. There's no single action that will magically fix your scans. Heck, there's no single action that will reliably balance your brand new color negatives.

Your best bet is some kind of 'intelligent' auto-color restoration tool; either within Photoshop, or one of the several pieces of software aimed specifically at scanned color negatives. The result will still be hit & miss.

IMO your best bet is to take one or two frames from a roll, or perhaps even an entire 'contact sheet' of scans, and then color balance those to satisfaction; then apply the same curve to all scans of the same roll. It helps (a lot!!!) if you scan the whole thing so that the balanced that comes out of the scanner is identical. The most straightforward way to achieve this is to scan the negatives as color slides instead, ensuring to capture 16 bit color depth as you'll run into posterization problems otherwise later on. Then invert the scans & color balance as described.

MFstooges · May 27, 2024

koraks said:
All color negatives degrade in their own unique way. There's no single action that will magically fix your scans. Heck, there's no single action that will reliably balance your brand new color negatives.

Your best bet is some kind of 'intelligent' auto-color restoration tool; either within Photoshop, or one of the several pieces of software aimed specifically at scanned color negatives. The result will still be hit & miss.

IMO your best bet is to take one or two frames from a roll, or perhaps even an entire 'contact sheet' of scans, and then color balance those to satisfaction; then apply the same curve to all scans of the same roll. It helps (a lot!!!) if you scan the whole thing so that the balanced that comes out of the scanner is identical. The most straightforward way to achieve this is to scan the negatives as color slides instead, ensuring to capture 16 bit color depth as you'll run into posterization problems otherwise later on. Then invert the scans & color balance as described.

Do you know if fuji frontier machine or lab scanner has this old negs color correction feature? If yes I may be able to ask them to scan couple frame and do color match in PS.
My slides on the other hand don't degrade like color negs even though they are not Kodachrome.

koraks · May 27, 2024

MFstooges said:
Do you know if fuji frontier machine or lab scanner has this old negs color correction feature?

Frontiers will try to 'neutralize' colors, but they may/will not manage if the originals have faded and/or shifted too much. Give it a try; it's the only way to find it.

jeffreyg · May 27, 2024

I don’t do color but a friend asked if I could rescue some faded poor color photos of his old girl friend. He emailed them to me. Out of curiosity I converted them to black and white and corrected as much as I could. I then used the nural filter in the current PS to colorize and got surprisingly good results. I used the filter to colorize a couple of original b and w negatives and also got acceptable results that could be color corrected. It of course depends on what you plan to do with the photos. Probably not the way to go for an exhibition print.

Alan Edward Klein · May 27, 2024

How are you scanning?

foc · May 28, 2024

koraks said:
Frontiers will try to 'neutralize' colors, but they may/will not manage if the originals have faded and/or shifted too much. Give it a try; it's the only way to find it.

+1

MFstooges · May 28, 2024

jeffreyg said:
I don’t do color but a friend asked if I could rescue some faded poor color photos of his old girl friend. He emailed them to me. Out of curiosity I converted them to black and white and corrected as much as I could. I then used the nural filter in the current PS to colorize and got surprisingly good results. I used the filter to colorize a couple of original b and w negatives and also got acceptable results that could be color corrected. It of course depends on what you plan to do with the photos. Probably not the way to go for an exhibition print.

See I don't have the current PS. It got very expensive since version 5, now it costs even more with the subscription base and AI BS.

Alan Edward Klein said:
How are you scanning?

Epson flatbed

mtjade2007 · Jun 4, 2024

I am using CS2 version too. In my opinion it is sufficient for manual balancing film scans. You will need to use manual level and/or manual curve tool to individually adjust each color (RGB) in highlight, middle tone and shadow individually. Unless your negative is faded beyond salvage the CS2 version is quite adequate. I have used it for a lot of expired films with some of them poorly processed as well. I am aware the results may not up to the standard of many here in this forum. But I have had fun with lots of decent images.

CS2 can be downloaded free from Adobe site. I am using it on Windows 10 Pro. My scanner is a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi-ii. This is a fantastic film scanner. It will give you a 6X7 image over 100 mega bytes. I loved it so much that I bought 3 of them. But one has its CCFL light failed waiting to be repaired.

koraks · Jun 5, 2024

mtjade2007 said:
CS2 can be downloaded free from Adobe site.

I think that loophole was closed about a decade ago or so.

albireo · Jun 5, 2024

MFstooges said:
I am still using Photoshop CS2. I am looking for an action or plug in to scan old color negative. I spend a lot of time color correcting and still doesn't come right. I can't get rid of the purplish hue and if I try to compensate it will throw all the other color balance off.
Or is there an alternative cheaper software for reconstructing from old color negs?

With really badly faded colour negatives, I find that the ROC (reconstruction of colour) algorithm used via Nikonscan 4.0.3 on my Coolscan does wonders.

If you have a friend or a colleague using a Coolscan + Nikonscan, ask them to scan your negative for you.

I'm not sure if the ROC algorithm exists (or existed at some point in time) as a standalone bit of software, too. If so, I'd try to source a copy.

jeffreyg · Jun 5, 2024

Do a search online there are some free colorize apps that you may be able to use as a work around. Changing from black and white to colour. I did in PS but you may get what you want going back and forth between apps

MFstooges · Jun 5, 2024

jeffreyg said:
Do a search online there are some free colorize apps that you may be able to use as a work around. Changing from black and white to colour. I did in PS but you may get what you want going back and forth between apps

Name?

jeffreyg · Jun 5, 2024

I have never used them but check out
Colourise.com and youcamonline editor.

jeffreyg · Jun 5, 2024

As I had posted I do black and white and used PS for a friend. When I read your original post I decided to try the PS neural filter for myself. Here is a sample of an original black and white that I thought would be a test for PS. I used the neural filter and then modified to get as close as I remembered the colors. I didn't spend much time and certainly don't claim it to be exhibition quality but it did work
Original black and white was on 120 Delta 400

Colorized version

I think you can salvage your faded images at least improve them I don't know how they will print but they might work for the web.

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warden · Jun 5, 2024

MFstooges said:
I am still using Photoshop CS2. I am looking for an action or plug in to scan old color negative. I spend a lot of time color correcting and still doesn't come right. I can't get rid of the purplish hue and if I try to compensate it will throw all the other color balance off.
Or is there an alternative cheaper software for reconstructing from old color negs?

Can you post the image here? I’m sure somebody will take a stab at it with PS and give you some feedback or pointers.

MFstooges · Jun 5, 2024

jeffreyg said:
I have never used them but check out
Colourise.com and youcamonline editor.

Thank you. The youcamonline worked for one sample and failed for another, it's a hit and miss. I will probably try it anyway.
No neural filter in PS CS2.

_T_ · Jun 5, 2024

I would rather have an accurate B&W version of my damaged photos than an imaginary color version produced by ai

250swb · Jun 8, 2024

I can't say I've scanned a lot of old colour negatives but when I get a cast caused by bad degradation I use a tool in the Nik Collection's Color Efex called 'white neutraliser'. Find a 'white' tone in the image using the colour picker and it allows you to not only correct the whites to a neutral tone or but also correct the whole image or only part of it by removing say a magenta cast. I'm not saying it gets Kodachrome looking exactly like it was, but with a more neutral starting point it's easier to say warm the image back up by applying a warming or cooling filter (also in Color Efex).

Photoshop action for scanning old color negative

MFstooges

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250swb

Photoshop action for scanning old color negative

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