What software do you use after scanning negatives with a camera to turn them into positives?

runswithsizzers · Apr 28, 2021

wiltw said:
Thx for more detail. That raises questions about a scenario like this.....

If I start with a film negative, when A) printing it I can make Print 1, then B) alther the WB and the exposure and make Print B
Print A might be brighter/darker than Print B. Print B might be better color balanced than Print A.

If I take that same negative and digitize it via my dSLR, if I use NLP to interpret my RAW file,
can I make one color balance and exposure and then
easily make a different color balance and lighter/darker exposure than the first?

Yes, there are two ways to do that:
1. You can re-edit the RAW file using the tools in the NLP edit panel. His color editing tools are very good. Contrast, brightness, lights and darks are all there. But only global adjustments to the whole image are possible (no gradient tool, no dodge/burn, no way to select anything or make any kind of local adjustments) - or -
2. You can save the NLP edits as a TIFF or JPEG and then use all the normal Lightroom tools without restriction - but with increased storage requirements.

grat · Apr 28, 2021

Old Gregg said:
No, I do not maintain that. Let me try again: the dye impurities of each layer are cancelled by the mask when the light goes through film, and CMY values that land on your CMOS sensor need no further corrections: they should match the characteristic curves from the data sheet. The mask's job is done. The next step is to adjust levels & gamma for each channel, because of what you wrote above. That's what the WB tool does on one end, but you still have to clip it manually on another.

Which essentially means we're saying the same thing-- the individual color curves have to be corrected separately, and that's what these automated packages are attempting to do.

I do not have any insights on Silverfast "negafix" feature. They have it for B&W films too. And the color inversion packages we've discussed also have all kinds of presets and simulations. People seem to like playing with different looks. Speaking of my process, I am not just describing it but sharing the results too. If you do not like the output you're welcome to dismiss my advice.

It's a very similar process. The negadoctor (not negafix) does a pretty good job at interpreting the color curves if you give it sufficient data for "mask", "highlight" and "shadow". You can then tweak individual channels further (most of this is on the 'corrections' tab). Negafix does OK if it has a profile-- but for many B&W films, you're out of luck. Fortunately, rolling your own is easy in B&W as a rule.

I do not know what difficulty you're bumping into, but my initial attempts were quite frustrating. This thread helped a lot, by the way, that was my starting point.

The two issues appear to be color and contrast. Playing with the color temp of my light panel improves things-- but I didn't write down what color temp I used successfully the last time I experimented, so I have to rediscover it. Somewhat embarrassing, really.

This evening, I made another pass, and set the panel to 'tungsten' (3200K) and my RAW processor to Tungsten, and achieved the closest yet to "real" color balance-- slightly better than the Epson's negafix-driven scan.

The other issue, especially it seems on 135 film, is poor contrast compared with the Epson. This surprises me, but may be down to incidental light and insufficiently masked light.

PhilBurton · Apr 28, 2021

Old Gregg said:
[ ... ]

The elephant in the room is that NLP is for Lightroom and Negmaster is for Photoshop. This means that you have to "Edit in Photoshop" in Lightroom on every file to get access to Negmaster. But in exchange, you get 100% of Photoshop power because post-conversion edits happen on a positive, inverted image. NLP, in comparison, is just a hotkey away right there in Lightroom, but you can't touch the image post-inversion.

Purely from a technical perspective, Negmaster is better because it can give you a very neutral (flat) starting point which you can enhance to your liking. It never fails. NLP tries too hard to impress, even when using its "soft" profile. And the NLP magic falls on its face when it sees an unusual negative: low-contrast scenes or scenes with one predominant color.

I suspect that under the hood Negmaster uses much better math. It does not need the white balance to be set to a specific film emulsion, it doesn't get fooled by uncropped film borders, and it doesn't get affected by unusual color casts in the scene.

On a flip side, the NLP user experience is far better and users who prefer fully automatic, no-tweaking required experience will be very happy with its default "Lab" preset. While Negmaster author polluted the UI with tons of irrelevant and annoying functionality which largely duplicates Photoshop's native controls. If the author drops the 95% of Negmaster features, the user experience will be dramatically better. For no apparent reason, Negmaster comes with its own darkness/contrast, saturation/vibrancy, color balance sliders, paper and scanner simulations and a ton of other useless crap.

[ ... ]

@Old Gregg
Informative comparison, and it would be a good guide for me to do my own comparisons. The point about Negmaster requiring Photoshop is not a big deal for me, because I expect to do dust removal in Photoshop. However, the guy who wrote Negmaster refuses to allow free trials. To me, that's inexplicable, but it is what it is.

wiltw · Apr 28, 2021

runswithsizzers said:
Yes, there are two ways to do that:
1. You can re-edit the RAW file using the tools in the NLP edit panel. His color editing tools are very good. Contrast, brightness, lights and darks are all there. But only global adjustments to the whole image are possible (no gradient tool, no dodge/burn, no way to select anything or make any kind of local adjustments) - or -
2. You can save the NLP edits as a TIFF or JPEG and then use all the normal Lightroom tools without restriction - but with increased storage requirements.

Thx. One more question...

using LR, I can take RAW file Image1 and make virtual copies, so that Print A is one virtual copy and Print B is a second virtual copy (with different Exposure and WB values); then I can independently create JPG/TIFF from each virtual copy. Then...
using NLP, how does one accomplish what I just decribed?

PhilBurton · Apr 29, 2021

Old Gregg said:
He's quite a character, yes. He also insists on destroying Negmaster UX with useless anti-features that only get in the way. However, it is usually the stubborn ones with determination to succeed, who, after endless iterations, end up making the products we fall in love with. Negmaster uses the best inversion math of any tool I tried, delivers results comparable to manual inversion, just look at it, and saves me a lot of time.

Having been in the software business for the majority of my career, it's more than just "determination to succeed" or even the best feature set that wins. It's also effective marketing, in this case, a free trial. A feature set that's cluttered with useless anti-features also detracts from the odds of winning. I'm not saying he can't "win." But the question is what constitutes "winning." Remaining a one-person possibly shoestring operation is quite different than growing a small company with corresponding revenues. Software is a highly leverages business. You have to invest a minimum amount as "table stakes" but it doesn't cost you that much more to add a lot of satisfied customers. And the profits will follow.

Adrian Bacon · Apr 29, 2021

grat said:
One of the complaints I've always had with Lightroom (and Darktable) is that they feel you should have exactly *one* "catalog" that contains every single photo you've ever worked with or wanted to. I'd love to have separate collections such as "Masters", "archival", etc.. At the moment, I've got some 8,000 pictures in my catalog-- some are duplicates, some are pictures sent to me by other people, some I keep because I don't want to lose, some I keep because I'm too lazy to delete-- but for day-to-day, I don't touch 90% of those files. I can select "rolls" or "files" or "folders"-- I can select by tags, or lens, or camera, or aspect ratio-- but having to have everything in a single monolithic catalog is a bit irritating.

Ermm... You can have as many catalogs as you like with LR. I maintain several, for various uses.

grat · Apr 29, 2021

Adrian Bacon said:
Ermm... You can have as many catalogs as you like with LR. I maintain several, for various uses.

As I think I mentioned elsewhere, it's been a really, really long time since I used Lightroom.

Adrian Bacon · Apr 29, 2021

runswithsizzers said:
But if I tell NLP to make a TIFF copy, that TIFF copy is 90MB. So if I keep the RAW, what was 33MB is now 123MB.

The reason for this is because the raw file is the raw sensel data (i.e. one color per pixel, then demosaiced when processed), be it bayer, or fuji x-trans. If you make a TIFF, it will be a full RGB per pixel, hence, waaaayy larger.

runswithsizzers · Apr 29, 2021

Nelari said:
I have. Some negatives are inverted pretty well, but not all are. The RAW files are from a Pentax camera (type .PEF).

Perhaps you could ask Vuescan, the company?

Just to follow up, communication with VueScan confirms that their software does not work with Fuji's .RAF files.

wiltw · Apr 29, 2021

Adrian Bacon said:
The reason for this is because the raw file is the raw sensel data (i.e. one color per pixel, then demosaiced when processed), be it bayer, or fuji x-trans. If you make a TIFF, it will be a full RGB per pixel, hence, waaaayy larger.

Ergo, a number of us want to store only the RAW (a dSLR photo of an old neg), then -- when absolutely necessary for a specific purpose -- create the JPG or TIFF only when the need arises. Needing to create a TIFF of every scanned neg is not space efficient.

Adrian Bacon · Apr 29, 2021

wiltw said:
Ergo, a number of us want to store only the RAW (a dSLR photo of an old neg), then -- when absolutely necessary for a specific purpose -- create the JPG or TIFF only when the need arises. Needing to create a TIFF of every scanned neg is not space efficient.

Nope, it's not. You're right there, however, It's not unreasonable to have one or more intermediary steps to get to the final output that are themselves temporary. There's nothing wrong with having a catalog of just the raw files, or keeping the raw original scans in cold storage somewhere, then having a catalog of rendered jpegs. If you need more quality than the jpegs that you've got, then you can go back and re-process just the raw files in question to whatever output you need. If you're using LR, it's previews are basically low resolution jpegs that it stores in a proprietary mini-catalog with the same name as the original file (this is how it matches them up). You can do the same with just storing rendered jpegs and get rid of the intermediary tiff files.

PhilBurton · Apr 30, 2021

Adrian Bacon said:
Ermm... You can have as many catalogs as you like with LR. I maintain several, for various uses.

If you are a professional who also does personal photography, then definitely two (or more) catalogs. If you are an amateur, there are valid use cases for multiple catalogs. Otherwise, you create all sorts of issues by not having just one catalog. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/ This forum is a great place to read about this issue, including the complications created by having multiple catalogs.

Adrian Bacon · Apr 30, 2021

PhilBurton said:
If you are a professional who also does personal photography, then definitely two (or more) catalogs. If you are an amateur, there are valid use cases for multiple catalogs. Otherwise, you create all sorts of issues by not having just one catalog. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/ This forum is a great place to read about this issue, including the complications created by having multiple catalogs.

I have never ever, ever, ever had an issue with multiple catalogs. Ever. I use LR all day long pretty much every day.

if people are running into problems, they’re trying to do something it’s not designed to do.

PhilBurton · Apr 30, 2021

Adrian Bacon said:
I have never ever, ever, ever had an issue with multiple catalogs. Ever. I use LR all day long pretty much every day.

if people are running into problems, they’re trying to do something it’s not designed to do.

@Adrian Bacon I don't doubt your experience and knowledge.

I suggest that we move this issue to https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/. A lot of the ideas pro and con multiple catalogs, the why and why not, have been covered there. It's a forum full of Lightroom users, some of them quite expert.

What software do you use after scanning negatives with a camera to turn them into positives?

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