ColorPerfect and B/W
Since I published 'The Illustrated Guide to to Film Scanning', a number of people have asked me if the method would work for B/W. So I went into the attic and dug up and old roll of Kodak Tmax that I'd tortured through a battered Rolleiflex many years ago. It's poorly exposed (this particular frame is underexposed) and questionably developed, but hey, there it is.
The scanning method I advocate in the guide, is based on the assumption that it doesn't really matter what the chemical contents are of the particular piece of celluloid that you feed your scanner. You make a kind of snapshot of the film, correct it for scanner behavior with a dedicated IT8 calibration, make a linear file and process that in ColorPerfect. So for this B/W, I followed the exact same procedure as for negative film described in the guide. The only difference is, digital ICE doesn't work with B/W, but I suppose B/W photographers know this already. In the color workflow, I converted from the scanner profile to ProPhotoRGB, to work in the largest possible workspace. After that I simply changed the mode to Greyscale and there you are, you've got a 16bit B/W file that contains all highlight and shadow information that's present in the film. By definition it's therefore rather bland, see the unprocessed file above, but you now can (and should) apply your usual Photoshop skullduggery to taste, to make the image come to life. I will leave that to the true B/W photographers among you. I really appreciate a good B/W, but it's just never become my thing.
Once more, here's the link to the guide on Amazon:
The Illustrated Guide to Film Scanning: A best-practice guide to scanning negatives and transparencies: Gerard Kingma: 9781484137437: Amazon.com: Books
Please post your own experiences here. I will try to help out where I can.
Best regards, Gerard Kingma
