Negative Lab Pro. C41 Digital Conversion in Lightroom

[jmahto]

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9 hours ago, Nick Bedford said:

I've tried to use this on negatives I've scanned with the Pakon F135+ in raw mode and I have never been able to come close to those Pakon results (the default NLP result is way off with severe green colour casts). Frankly, I've probably wiped a year off my life from self-induced stress relating to trying to DSLR scan C41 negatives myself lol. How the heck did they ever get them to print in the darkroom?! I thought my software engineering background would give me a head start but nope.

I wish Kodak would produce a new higher-resolution Pakon and be done with it.

/rant

Did you try with doing WB first using the unexposed part of the negative (orange cast)? Also a proper daylight balanced light table helps for initial DSLR scan.

Having said that, I have noticed that my results are not consistent for all the negatives. Some are harder to get right. Fortunately they are fewer. Most came out close to that of Plustek scanner output. I do share your frustration though. This is why I am shooting more Ektachrome now than Ektar. 

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[Stuart Richardson]

14 hours ago, Nick Bedford said:

 Frankly, I've probably wiped a year off my life from self-induced stress relating to trying to DSLR scan C41 negatives myself lol. How the heck did they ever get them to print in the darkroom?!
/rant

The orange mask is designed to work with color papers...that is the only reason color negative film is orange in the first place. You could just as easily do a negative film which had a clear base and natural colors on inversion (in fact, Rollei did have a film like this at one point, though I never tried it), but they it would not work at all with the color darkroom. I imagine if digital cameras were not a thing, but scanners were, Kodak would have offered films both scanning and optical printing...

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19 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

The orange mask is designed to work with color papers...that is the only reason color negative film is orange in the first place.

No and yes. The orange mask is used to suppress unwanted colour effects of the magenta dye in the negative (thus "no"). Using an orange mask, the image becomes crispier (less grey) in colour. It can be used in colour negatives since the orange mask can be filtered out in the second step, i.e. when making the positiv print (thus "yes"). For scanners this is done with the white balance. Colour slides cannot be masked since there is no intermediate step like with negatives.

19 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

You could just as easily do a negative film which had a clear base and natural colors on inversion

In general not, due to the properties of the magenta dye. For details see e.g. Hunt (2004): the reproduction of colour, page 244.

Hermann-Josef

[Stuart Richardson]

5 hours ago, Jossie said:

No and yes. The orange mask is used to suppress unwanted colour effects of the magenta dye in the negative (thus "no"). Using an orange mask, the image becomes crispier (less grey) in colour. It can be used in colour negatives since the orange mask can be filtered out in the second step, i.e. when making the positiv print (thus "yes"). For scanners this is done with the white balance. Colour slides cannot be masked since there is no intermediate step like with negatives.

In general not, due to the properties of the magenta dye. For details see e.g. Hunt (2004): the reproduction of colour, page 244.

Hermann-Josef

Thank you for correcting me! I looked into this and see it is more complicated than I realized. I thought it was due to the possible range of sensitivity in the papers, rather than the efficiency of the dyes.

[frame-it]

found this on some blog, a free download..quite a simple starting point in LR once the DNG or Tiff of a negative scan is loaded

 

InvertColors.lrtemplate

[Krusty]

I also use Negative Lab Pro. I scan to RAW with Vuescan and then I do the conversion with this Lightroom Plugin. I am not a professional photographer and I am quite unexperienced with the analog photography, but in my opinion the results are very good and for me it is the fastest way to get good pictures. I do not want to sit too long on the postprocessing after I did the scan. The scanning already takes long enough, so the rest must be fast and this plugin is fast and I only have to to 3 steps (white-Balance, crop, convert).

I recommend it.

[benqui]

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Up to now I use a Braun FS-1200 Scanner with Silver Fast 8 for my negatives. It is easy to use but (in this really kills me sometimes) the Scanner is loud and it takes a such a long time until the scan is done. But I am happy with the results. 

Just for fun I tried the Negative Lab Pro and I used a Lumix from my son with a  Makrolens and converted the negatives with Lightroom. Wow! I was so happy when I saw the results with my b/w photos. It was easy, fast and worked without any problems. I did some b/w scans with my Braun and compared the results. The removal of dust or other particles was very good with the Braun Scanner, and you have to be sure to remove most of your particles before you use Neg Lab Pro if you dont want to spend extra time on your PC.

I will try the same comparison with some color negatives, but for b/w the Neg Lab Pro makes analog photography much more easier for me. I think it will become my first choice to convert my negatives. The most important reason for me is the speed without making a compromise in quality.

Have a look:

Scan with Braun FS-1200

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[benqui]

Negative Lab Pro

 

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[benqui]

Sorry guys!!!!!! I did not see that you were talking about C-41!! Shame on me! As soon as I have compared some color slides, I will report my experience!

Read first, then talk!!!!

[Stealth3kpl]

 

 

Fast forward to 4 mins. 

Pete

Edited November 10, 2019 by Stealth3kpl

[Krusty]

Hi all,

i am a newbie to analog photography, vuescan and negative lab pro. But nevertheless I want to share my workflow here. My Equiment is a Leica R4 and Leica CL analog. I shoot on Kodak Portra 400 and Kodak Tri-X 400 b/w. My Scanner is a Minolta DiMAGE 5400.

I have modified the film carrier and I have made with a knife some hollows at the bottom of each image-place of the carrier, so that a little piece of the unexposed film is visible in vuescan which I can use later for the white-balance correction.

Vuescan Settings

Tab Input:

• Task: Scan to file
• Media B/W negative  or color negative
• Bits per pixel: auto
• make gray from: Auto
• Scan Resolution 5400 DPI

Tab Crop:

• Crop size: auto

Tab Output:

• Raw file: checked
• Raw file name: dng
• Raw file type: 48 Bit RGB

Now my workflow:

Vuescan:

1. Prescan all 4 or 6 pictures in the slide
2. Set focus for all pictures 
3. Tab "input" --> Lock exposure (because when I set crop "maximum" then the exposure should not change as it is already right due to the automatic crop)
4. Tab-crop: crop size "maximum" for all pictures
5. Scan all pictures

After the whole film roll is scanned, I import all pictures to Lightroom:

1. Set white balance for all pictures in the unexposed gap, which I have entered with a knife to the film carrier. 
2. crop all images so that you don't see any borders of the carrier
3. convert each picture one by one with negative lab pro and do your preffered settings
4. export 82% jpgs to "Apple Photos". I delete the DNGs as one DNG has 250 Megabytes!

Thats my report... Any improvements from your side will be appreciated. e.g. does white balance correction make sense on b/w scans?

Regards,

Krusty.