Scanning Negatives—What Am I Doing Wrong?

[piblondin]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Hi everyone, I happen to have an M7 for a few days, so I shot a couple rolls of film this week. I tried to scan the negatives using my Nikon Coolscan IV ED with VueScan on my Mac. However, the colors look completely screwed up with little contrast, and even after fiddling with them in Aperture, I couldn't get things to look as good as my scans from the 4x6 prints from the lab. Any advice on what settings to use to get this right? In VueScan, I set the color tab to the film I was using, Portra 400 VC, and the color setting to either auto, manual, or white balance. I tried all three without any consistently good results. I also tried manually white balancing in Aperture.

 

Here's a comparison between the negative scan and the print scan from the lab.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[andybarton]

Just try an "Auto White Balance" in Photoshop - works wonders

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 

There are also a billion other techniques for getting an exact white balance correction, but AWB works pretty well 99% of the time in my experience.

 

There are ways of setting the base colour for your film in Vuescan, if you do a google search, which also helps.

 

This is one of the reasons why I tend to stick to slide film when shooting colour film, to be honest, as the film presets in Vuescan aren't very helpful, in my experience. They also need updating for modern films.

[andybarton]

Here's a version that I have done a quick and dirty on ONLY in Aperture. Aperture doesn't have an "Auto White Balance" feature.

 

I adjusted the White Balance Temp to 3772 and Tint to -26

 

I also adjusted the individual RGB levels so as to bring the left adjustment slider to the edge of the histogram

 

By playing around with the sliders, I am sure that you can do a much better job than I have.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[wparsonsgisnet]

Assuming some cropping is planned, you could crop before the color balancing. Then the stuff you don't want in the pic won't cause problems with balance.

[01af]

Have a look here: C F Systems Technical and Economic Consultants

[piblondin]

Thanks for the responses! I was trying to manual white balance in Aperture by picking a point in the image, but, it didn't seem to work as I expected. Anyhow, I'll try auto settings in PS or LR and tweak from there. Thanks again!

[microview]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Taking image into LR3. temp -20, tint -34, brightness -17, saturation +10.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[erl]

In my experience, selecting a known colour film is VueScan is problematic. I am a firm fan of VueScan but it does have some foibles worth understanding.

 

In your particular example I am pretty sure choosing the Portra film from the menu is the major source of your trouble. I always select "Generic" for colour neg film. That consistently give me better results than any of the listed films. I then set my black point and white point as wide as possible in the linear histogram. This renders a very flat scan but importantly grabs the maximum info from the film.

 

I then go into PS to carry out further adjustments. Mainly setting the black point and white point where I want them, and of course the mid point. Colour, for me, usually arrive pretty well ok, but if necessary, I adjust in PS as well.

 

I suggest re-scanning trying what I have suggested rather than trying to fix a bad scan. IMHO the lab scan you have posted is certainly better than yours, but it is still not very good. I would expect much better from the gear you have. More practice and more questioning will deliver.

[erl]

As an after thought, here is my quick changes to the lab scan. Obviously, without access to the neg I am limited in the corrections possible, but I hope it represents a possibility of improvement for you.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[archi4]

Try using Nikon Scan 4 software.

For some film types/images it works better than any other software (I have Vuescan and Silverfast) with the least hassle! At least that is my experience on my Nikon 8000 scanne

rmaurice

[rob_x2004]

Not to put too fine a point on it;

.....

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 

The simplest fix;

.....

 

 

Obviously you can chase it a heck of a lot more.

If you are stuck on Vuesacan then like Erl says.

Personally I would like rmaurice says.

Whatever you decide, scanning is a learning curve and there is a lot of suck it and see involved depending on your work flow and the edit programs you use.

[Rolo]

Just uploading this to see how it compares with the others.

 

Your scan may not be perfect, but you're not taking the best out of what you have.

 

Finding your black is what's not happening from what I see. It's pretty important.

 

Then find your grey and the jobs almost done.

 

If you can do it in the scanning software you can scan and finish, but recovery later can generally be achieved; as in this case with a tiny 72 jpeg.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[250swb]

This was done with CS5 and using 'Auto Colour' and then a tweak in Levels

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[erl]

After viewing all the attempts at correction, mine include, I believe there is nothing that can be done to significantly improve this scan that is basically flawed.

 

Overall, I see the skin tones as too red in every attempt. Back to the drawing board (scanner) is the only place to recover.

[rob_x2004]

The question wasnt how do I fix this image, it was how do I scan properly in the first place. The red histogram is off the clock, or at least pushed to the right, which means that the preset for scanning that film isnt right. I would be surprised if turning everything to off like Erl suggests wouldnt get you pretty close to the mark. If your monitor is up to par you should be able to preview the viewscan settings, determine what will provide an acceptable scan and store those. I only used vuescan for a couple of months and never really got on with it but I never got anything as bad as this scan.

[wattsy]

Overall, I see the skin tones as too red in every attempt. Back to the drawing board (scanner) is the only place to recover.

 

I kind of agree. My own very quick attempt (below) concentrates on neutralising the skin tones but the rest of the scene has goes awry. It's difficult to make much of a judgement without knowing what light the subject was in when the photo was taken. I have a hunch that the skin tones may have been in a strong evening light and that 250swb's attempt (with its whiff of Eggleston colour) might well be the closest.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[erl]

wattsy you could easily be correct about the lighting which would produce the cool streetscape effect versus the warm skintone in your example.. Exacerbating that effect is the selected film type that would exaggerate the result.

 

The real solution is to re-scan with 'generic' settings on the scanner when using VueScan. This will fascilitate easy corrections, if required, in PS.

[PasMichiel]

 

I used C1 5 pro. And looked at the histogram and the Red is totally off. The green and blue are next to eachother but the red not. So I moved it and sellected the with stripe on the road as White balance.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[PasMichiel]

 

With some vivid colors It will turn out like this, but I think your scanner maybe using the wrong color sheet ccs file.

[piblondin]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I will try without the film preset and see what I can do by adjusting the levels. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with VueScan, as I'm not aware of another program for the Mac that will work with my scanner.