Scanning Ektar

xtolsniffer · Aug 21, 2020

Does anyone have any top tips for scanning Ektar? I have both Silverfast and Vuescan and while pretty much everything else scans OK (I use a lot of Portra), Ektar always comes out washed-out and with a colour cast. I use both a V700 for MF and a Reflecta RPS7200 for 35mm. My workflow with Silverfast has been honed over the years so that I can get a pretty good printable scan straight out of Silverfast, while with Vuescan I need to optimise the scan and then manipulate separately in GIMP, but try as I might, I can't get Ektar to look normal. Any suggestions?

Lachlan Young · Aug 21, 2020

Two things to consider: are you overexposing Ektar? If you are, that's a very bad idea as it causes significant colour crossover issues - it's better off being exposed more in the manner of a transparency - where you hold the highlights & the shadows go where they will.

Secondly, scanning the negs as positives & then dividing out the mask colour (in Photoshop/ Affinity etc) before inversion & setting black/ white points will deliver drastically better results than the often questionable understanding of colour negs that most scanning software has.

etn · Aug 21, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
Secondly, scanning the negs as positives & then dividing out the mask colour (in Photoshop/ Affinity etc) before inversion & setting black/ white points will deliver drastically better results than the often questionable understanding of colour negs that most scanning software has.

+1 on that. I found that it provides quite good results (besides, I have no other choice: I do DSLR scanning which is not supported by usual scanning software)
I found the "auto color" feature of Photoshop usually adds a nice touch to the image. Do this as a last step once every other processing (inversion, histogram equalization etc.) has been performed.

xtolsniffer · Aug 21, 2020

Thanks for that, I might try the scanning as positive and subtract the mask in GIMP, see how that works. I can use IR dust removal then too. Portra scans beautifully using the negative profile in Silverfast, but Ektar is just ugly.

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 21, 2020

I tried Ektar with Epsonscan and my V600, then gave up and went back to Velvia 50 chromes. Portra does pretty well too.

ckuwajima · Aug 21, 2020

I use Silverfast Negafix Ektar profile to convert the scan into positive. This combination renders contrasty and vivid colors.

albireo · Aug 21, 2020

I use Ektar in medium format almost exclusively, and find it easier to scan than Portra 160, and about as easy as Fuji 400H.

I use Vuescan and would recommend inverting using the 'Vuescan Advanced Workflow' as summarised on the following page

http://benneh.net/techshit/better-colour-neg-scanning-with-vuescan/

Works wonderfully well giving me superb colours (even though the author says he doesn't use the method anymore)

xtolsniffer · Aug 21, 2020

Thanks, I tried that and I got some crazy over-exposure, I think I need to try it more carefully again....I can't seem to alter the sliders on the histrogram.

albireo · Aug 21, 2020

let me know if I can help - works reasonably well for me, although for really difficult lighting I sometimes use a Photoshop plugin called 'Colorperfect' to invert my negatives.

xtolsniffer · Aug 21, 2020

Thanks for the offer, I think I need to read up more on Vuescan - I usually use Silverfast but have more or less given up on it with Ektar.

PhilBurton · Aug 21, 2020

xtolsniffer said:
Does anyone have any top tips for scanning Ektar? I have both Silverfast and Vuescan and while pretty much everything else scans OK (I use a lot of Portra), Ektar always comes out washed-out and with a colour cast. I use both a V700 for MF and a Reflecta RPS7200 for 35mm. My workflow with Silverfast has been honed over the years so that I can get a pretty good printable scan straight out of Silverfast, while with Vuescan I need to optimise the scan and then manipulate separately in GIMP, but try as I might, I can't get Ektar to look normal. Any suggestions?

@xtolsniffer
[Love the 'nym.']

Do you use the same settings in both Silverfast and Epsonscan? Or as close as possible?

xtolsniffer · Aug 21, 2020

Actually Epson scan does a better job straight out of the scanner than silverfast just leaving most things on auto....

destroya · Aug 21, 2020

if you use vuescan, there is a book/ ebook called vuescan bible. it has a great simple process for scanning negs and a kinda similar process to remove the orange mask. I got a copy at my library and copied the pages taht cover that part. try to find it and it will make life easier. than once in photoshop, set black, grey and white point and you are 97% there

john

4season · Aug 21, 2020

IMO, skip Vuescan for scanning color negatives with orange base, and don't waste your energy creating inversion layers in Photoshop in an effort to cancel out the color, because the density of that orange cast isn't just the film base, it's also part of the image, hence variable density. But if Vuescan is all you've got, you might try tweaking R, G and B via RGB histogram rather than attempting to do so visually - you can arrive at something usable pretty quickly in this manner. But unfortunately you may need to change settings each time the lighting in your photos changes: I never found a satisfactory set-and-forget setting, and Vuescan's profiles for color negative film seemed more ornamental than useful.

Actually, easiest and in some ways best results were with Epson Scan, though it lacks a number of features that I wanted. I ended up settling upon Silverfast AI Studio and got to where I can knock out batches pretty efficiently with room to individually tweak. I feel that I've got a pretty good scan when all final corrections can be handled within Lightroom without maxing out it's adjustments.

Lachlan Young · Aug 21, 2020

4season said:
and don't waste your energy creating inversion layers in Photoshop in an effort to cancel out the color

I don't know what method you are using, but it works perfectly and correctly if done right. It has to be done before inversion in Photoshop - you sample the colour of the mask/ rebate, make a layer, fill the layer with the selected colour, set blend mode for that layer to 'divide', done. The rebate should clear at that stage. Then invert (inversion layer), set black and white points etc. An awful lot of approaches seem to ignore the importance of using the Divide blend mode.

It isn't difficult to essentially automate the entire process from unclipped neg scan to reasonably colour correct inversion into a single click - if exposures are fairly consistent & film processing is on track. It does however require a bit of work to get to the point where you have the aforesaid LUT however.

albireo · Aug 21, 2020

https://grain2pixel.com

People I know are reporting excellent results inverting negatives with the above (free) Photoshop plugin. I haven't tried it because as I said I'm happy with Vuescan's Advanced Workflow + Colourperfect, but it might be worth a try.

MattKing · Aug 21, 2020

The problem with the inversion layers and divide blend approach is as stated by 4season - the mask isn't the same throughout the negative, so a single blend won't be correct everywhere.

PhilBurton · Aug 21, 2020

4season said:
IMO, skip Vuescan for scanning color negatives with orange base, and don't waste your energy creating inversion layers in Photoshop in an effort to cancel out the color, because the density of that orange cast isn't just the film base, it's also part of the image, hence variable density. But if Vuescan is all you've got, you might try tweaking R, G and B via RGB histogram rather than attempting to do so visually - you can arrive at something usable pretty quickly in this manner. But unfortunately you may need to change settings each time the lighting in your photos changes: I never found a satisfactory set-and-forget setting, and Vuescan's profiles for color negative film seemed more ornamental than useful.

Actually, easiest and in some ways best results were with Epson Scan, though it lacks a number of features that I wanted. I ended up settling upon Silverfast AI Studio and got to where I can knock out batches pretty efficiently with room to individually tweak. I feel that I've got a pretty good scan when all final corrections can be handled within Lightroom without maxing out it's adjustments.

+1

Bormental · Aug 21, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
Secondly, scanning the negs as positives & then dividing out the mask colour (in Photoshop/ Affinity etc) before inversion & setting black/ white points will deliver drastically better results than the often questionable understanding of colour negs that most scanning software has.

I would argue that this is true only for those who have a lot of experience, i.e. know how a particular emulsion should look like under given lighting, have a reasonable understanding of R/G/B sensitivity differences between layers, plus there's a few gotchas like getting a proper linear scan to begin working with. I have practicing manual inversion for months, and still having trouble beating good lab scans or even Negafix profiles in Silverfast.

MattKing said:
The problem with the inversion layers and divide blend approach is as stated by 4season - the mask isn't the same throughout the negative, so a single blend won't be correct everywhere.

I don't think @4season understood what Lachlan was saying. "Divide" is not "subtract", when you're dividing you're dividing by a larger number in the darkest areas. This has been covered on photrio numerous times. It's especially obvious in Affinity Photo, where you have to type the formula manually, and indeed that's how you remove the orange mask.

MattKing · Aug 21, 2020

MattKing said:
The problem with the inversion layers and divide blend approach is as stated by 4season - the mask isn't the same throughout the negative, so a single blend won't be correct everywhere.

Bormental said:
I don't think @4season understood what Lachlan was saying. "Divide" is not "subtract", when you're dividing you're dividing by a larger number in the darkest areas. This has been covered on photrio numerous times. It's especially obvious in Affinity Photo, where you have to type the formula manually, and indeed that's how you remove the orange mask.

The mask varies with the image - the differing dyes present in the image result in a mask that differs in that part of the negative.
If there is cyan dye at location in the negative (which corresponds with red in the subject) the mask will be different than if there is blue dye at another location in the negative (which corresponds with yellow in the subject).
The mask doesn't just vary with density, it varies with subject colour.
For that reason the sampling done as part of the approach that uses inversion layers and a divide blend doesn't accurately neutralize the mask.

Lachlan Young · Aug 21, 2020

The mask requires a global colour correction as designed. 50R was the essential design aim according to those involved. Sampling the base colour and dividing it against itself de-facto, if not de-jure does the same thing. It divides every instance of that specific colour against itself to equal 1, therefore rendering it as white (black after inversion). Which is essentially what you are doing when you dial in your cc in the enlarger. Think of the sampled colour as your filter pack.

Bormental · Aug 21, 2020

I do not see a contradiction here. All pixels of the original are divided by a constant. It makes perfect sense as it's a digital equivalent of light going through a negative from an enlarger. Enlarger's light source is a constant (you don't have different light sources for different parts of the negative) and the RA-4 paper layers are also a constant, and the sensitivity of paper layers is inversely proportional to layers of a C-41 film. The mask is trivial, but adjusting curves+gamma per-channel is annoying.

4season · Aug 21, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
I don't know what method you are using, but it works perfectly and correctly if done right. It has to be done before inversion in Photoshop - you sample the colour of the mask/ rebate, make a layer, fill the layer with the selected colour, set blend mode for that layer to 'divide', done. The rebate should clear at that stage. Then invert (inversion layer), set black and white points etc. An awful lot of approaches seem to ignore the importance of using the Divide blend mode.

I'm not sure I follow you, but I tried this, starting with this image as Background Layer:

Using eyedropper tool, I copied a sample of orange film base, pasted into a new Divide layer.
Next I created an Invert layer
And finally, I created a Levels Adjust layer. There, I set white and black points and midpoints for the R, G and B channels, and arrived at this:

Is that what you meant?

Les Sarile · Aug 22, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
Two things to consider: are you overexposing Ektar? If you are, that's a very bad idea as it causes significant colour crossover issues - it's better off being exposed more in the manner of a transparency - where you hold the highlights & the shadows go where they will.

Kodak Ektar 100 is easily my favorite color negative and I've shot many rolls since it's first release and I would find it very limiting if I couldn't over/under expose it.. I always test the exposure latitude of every film type when I first use it so that I will know exactly what my system can handle.

Kodak Ektar 100, Coolscan+Nikonscan with all color/contrast controls off/neutral.I could also over/under expose during scan, adjust exposure/colors in post as I need.

With this knowledge, I can freely over and under expose a scene as I see fit to get the desired results. For instance in this scene, my CW meter recommends an exposure of 1/60 but I wanted to slow the water flow down so I knew I had to shoot at 1/2 to get the effect which is +5 overexposure and this is what I got using Kodak Ektar 100,

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 22, 2020

xtolsniffer said:
Actually Epson scan does a better job straight out of the scanner than silverfast just leaving most things on auto....

Just be careful Auto doesn't clip the highlights. You may have to manually adjust the black and white points.

Scanning Ektar

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