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Scanning Consistency (Warning: Pictures)


Stealth3kpl

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Starting this thread I was hoping someone would show me how to get good results from scanning. I've shown my workflow. It gives me the best results I can achieve a full histogram for each RGB channel. I would appreciate it if someone could show their workflow start to finish so that I can compare. The whole workflow is needed from scanner set up to photoshop manipulation. Thanks.

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/film-forum/169496-scanning-consistency-warning-pictures.html#post1627966

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/film-forum/169496-scanning-consistency-warning-pictures-2.html#post1676308

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/film-forum/169496-scanning-consistency-warning-pictures.html#post1627966

 

Pete

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/film-forum/137284-colour-negative-scanning-vuescan-colorperfect.html#post1426430

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Reading this thread is doing my head in. Take a simple scan in VueScan and use Photoshop to do the rest.

 

LouisB

 

How?

 

 

I scan as a positive tiff,

 

 

How?

 

bring into Photoshop, and do all my adjustments there.

 

How?

 

 

This is way to complicated.

 

I set color balance, .

 

How?

 

 

All other changes are made in photoshop.

 

 

How?

 

 

Why do you care what others use or don't use?

They might have a good routine and may be able to give me a clue as to how to improve my routine

 

 

Most people use colour transparency film and get good scan results, or use colour negative film and get poor scan results.

Some people get good results with colour negative film.

 

Home-made scans of colour negatives are virtually always immediately recognised as such due to the weird colours.

 

 

But some people achieve very good results with colour neg. I want to see if anyone here knows how and if they are capable of passing that information on to someone else so that they are able to, thus increasing their enjoyment of using film and film cameras.

Pete

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How?

 

Actually, I left out an important step.

 

I take a simple scan in Vuescan. I scan to a TIFF file. I do set the colour film type, although in my experience this makes little difference. I therefore get a positive scan of the frame. If I really don't like the result I may slightly adjust the curves and resave the image.

 

I think that probably 2-3 in 10 scans are ideal straight off. Which means that for 7-8 scans I will have to do extra post processing in LR. I've always assumed the quality of the scan is a function of the quality of the exposure. Sometimes the exposure is bang on, other times it is not.

 

The step I left out is importing the scan into Lightroom as my 'raw' processor. It is in LR that I will adjust exposure, brightness, black point and contrast. The curves slider is particularly useful. Often I will get to a final version in LR.

 

I then take it into CS3 where I may decide to 'creatively' post process. This might involve using LAB space to boost colours, or curves to increase contrast further, or shadow/highlight, or all 3 depending on how I want to represent the final shot. Or it may be nothing more than resizing and sharpening (if required), if I have managed to expose the film correctly and I am happy with the scan itself.

 

However, bottom line, you have to ask yourself. Are you after the perfect scan, for scan's sake, or a photograph that you will like. I suggest the 99% of the time, even a crappy scan can be post-processed into an attractive end result.

 

LouisB

 

PS You can see examples of my results here: Hasselblad SWC - a set on Flickr

you may actually think they are poor in which case my process is not for you.

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Adjusting b/W points for each channel is of value sometimes, usually not.

 

Not necessary to scan as positive and invert. The few times I tried it it accomplished nothing. Just extra work.

 

I usually just scan a representative frame for a specific film type and save the settings. Recall them for the next frame. You are doing way too much work.

 

If you have a frame with a brightness range bigger than the scanner can capture, make two scans, one for highlights and one for shadows. Open in PS, align in difference mode using arrow keys, switch back to normal or luminosity mode, blend with luminosity mask. You can also blend with a mask and hand painting.

 

In the end if it looks good, as yours does, it is good.

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Not necessary to scan as positive and invert. The few times I tried it it accomplished nothing. Just extra work.

 

 

It could be. Unfortunately it remains a mystery to me how one gets one of these TIFFs that everyone raves about. Unfortunately no one wants to tell me. :(

 

This is a TIFF complete with the usual blown highlights straight from Vuescan.

 

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I wouldn't know where to start adjusting this.

 

This is what my un-necessary-positive-scan then inverted workflow gives for the same scan settings but saved as a Positive RAW.

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to seeing anyone's workflow, but please describe how to avoid clipping in the TIFF from the scanning software.

Pete

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It could be. Unfortunately it remains a mystery to me how one gets one of these TIFFs that everyone raves about. Unfortunately no one wants to tell me. :(

 

I've just said I will help you later in the week. Give me a chance.

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It could be. Unfortunately it remains a mystery to me how one gets one of these TIFFs that everyone raves about. Unfortunately no one wants to tell me. :(

 

This is a TIFF complete with the usual blown highlights straight from Vuescan.

 

[ATTACH]253046[/ATTACH]

 

I wouldn't know where to start adjusting this.

 

 

For a scan like this I would definitely go into the colour section and play with the curves low and high sliders. Possibly the brightness slider as well to try and get some contrast back into the scan. Then I'd import the scan into LR and in their I would increase the black point and play with the exposure, vibrance and saturation sliders until I recovered all the colour.

 

Also, I'm not sure this is blown highlights. The sky (presumably) was either white or grey and the snow is white. It is not like there is going to be a whole lot of detail in those area to recover. You've got a good white balance on the cake in the processed picture. Also I am assuming overcast giving an even, low contrast light.

 

I think you need to reduce the exposure, increase the contrast and saturation further and you'll get a colourful frame.

 

If on the other hand you tell me the sky was a clear winter blue and there was nice golden sunlight then I tend to agree - you have problems!

 

LouisB

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For a scan like this I would definitely go into the colour section and play with the curves low and high sliders. Possibly the brightness slider as well to try and get some contrast back into the scan. Then I'd import the scan into LR and in their I would increase the black point and play with the exposure, vibrance and saturation sliders until I recovered all the colour.

 

LouisB

 

Oh, I see. Thanks Louis. I'll have a look at that tomorrow perhaps. This and the link that Olaf's about to give me should put me on the right road. I'd sure like to find an easier and more successful workflow than the one I have.

Thanks again.

Pete

 

Any joy finding thank link that's been falling on my deaf ears Olaf?

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If someone is telling you then you refuse to listen. So why bother?

 

 

O1AF, THE LINK? THE LINK THAT I WAS DELIBERATELY IGNORING. HAVE YOU FOUND IT YET? CAN YOU GIVE ME IT? THE LINK I WAS IGNORING TO SPITE MY FACE? HAVE YOU GOT IT?

 

Then if there isn't a link where someone is telling me something but I'm refusing to listen I think you should apologize to me, don't you?

Respectfully, but to be honest, very annoyed,

Pete

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Is this absolutely necessary?

 

Do you mean this:

 

If someone is telling you then you refuse to listen. So why bother?

 

No, I don't think it was. It was a bolt out of the blue. I'm looking for some pointers, providing a thread where I was hoping everyone could pool ideas, like the other 2 scanning-related threads, and then someone who's most useful comment has been "Buy an M9" tells me that I'm ignoring the very information I seek.

Pete

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Here is a workflow for a shot I took yesterday and had processed this lunchtime.

 

Kodak Portra 160VC

 

First, scan in Vuescan. For this scan, I used the built in Portra setting with Auto Levels. Often I would use the Generic color negative film profile in Vuescan.

 

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Then, I open the saved tiff in Photoshop and adjusted the levels

 

 

Next, I colour corrected in a curves adjustment layer, choosing each colour channel separately - only one shown here

 

 

Then I add a second curves adjustment layer, to tweak the overall curve in RGB

 

 

In this case I also added a very light, soft-light neutral grad filter over about 25% of the top of the shot, just to bring something out of the sky - it was warm, bright but with high white cloud yesterday

 

 

Then I flattened, saved the tiff on a back-up drive and then saved for web.

 

 

And this is the finished shot.

 

 

Many of the above adjustments are on Actions in Photoshop, so take a second to do.

 

The whole thing, from first scan to finished shot took about 10 minutes and that included messing around with screen shots.

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