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Adjusting The Contrast Of A Scanned Image


Stealth3kpl

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This is rather pointless because I did it with Photoshop, but the main adjustment was to press 'Auto Contrast', doesn't Lightroom have anything like that? 

You want to basically squeeze the mid tones and the blacks together to get the correct contrast, then adjust the brightness to suit. Sometimes sliders aren't very intuitive for this, seeing a graph or a curve makes it easier to visualise how much squeezing you are doing.

To finish I burned the foreground grass to even it up, dodged some of the highlights on the faces to bring them out more, and spotted some dust in the sky. I'm, sure all this tweaks are possible in Lightroom in some form or other. If I were to have another go I'd dodge the two chaps on the left to lighten them up.

 

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ItsI Edited by 250swb
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5 hours ago, peterm1_Leica said:

Where I am confronted with this in an image in Lightroom I will usually start by protecting the highlights first by pulling back the highlights slider to the left. How far depends on the image. I start here as blown highlights are the most noticeable problem (and I find most objectionable issue) with many images so fixing that is a good starting point and gives me a good basis for working on other issues. Once I am happy with highlights I will often adjust the overall contrast and exposure sliders - boosting contrast and pulling  back exposure marginally too if it needs it. This can help the overall tone by adding more shadows and blacks in the image but it does run the risk of darkening the blacks too much. So I sometimes I have to then adjust both the shadows and blacks sliders selectively by brightening them a bit if overall the image is too dark for my liking or if I have clipped the shadows too much. This admittedly does diminish some of the contrast I added in the previous step but it is often needed to produce a tone I prefer with not too much contrast in either highlights or blacks.  If needed though I will sometimes also then adjust the clarity slide which then boosts mid tones a bit where I like there to be more contrast.  I don't know if this is Kosher (many prefer just to use levels) but it works for me. 

Thank you, that's very informative.

Pete

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7 minutes ago, 250swb said:

This is rather pointless because I did it with Photoshop, but the main adjustment was to press 'Auto Contrast', doesn't Lightroom have anything like that? 

You want to basically squeeze the mid tones and the blacks together to get the correct contrast, then adjust the brightness to suit. Sometimes sliders aren't very intuitive for this, seeing a graph or a curve makes it easier to visualise how much squeezing you are doing.

To finish I burned the foreground grass to even it up, dodged some of the highlights on the faces to bring them out more, and spotted some dust in the sky. I'm, sure all this tweaks are possible in Lightroom in some form or other. If I were to have another go I'd dodge the two chaps on the left to lighten them up.

 

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ItsI

Thanks Steve. I've had it in my mind that I should be doing as little as possible having taken time to get good contrast in the negative then scanned to not clip anything. I see that I shouldn't be worried about clipping blacks too much (which I suspected was my problem) and that getting the scan is only the start of the story. Somehow it feels like cheating messing with sliders but of course this is what has always been done in optical printing with dodging and burning.

Pete

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2 hours ago, Stealth3kpl said:

 I see that I shouldn't be worried about clipping blacks too much (which I suspected was my problem) and that getting the scan is only the start of the story. 

 

It's a perfect low contrast scan which means you didn't start with a proper black anyway. Check the histogram of the original scan and you'll see the 'black point' is a long way away from the left hand side of the graph but it shows nothing has been clipped by scanning. You now need to give the image back it's natural tone curve, mainly this will be adjusting the black point and mid-tones, the whites often look after themselves. It's all very quick to do when you get your eye in, but you shouldn't need to lose anything in the blacks unless it's detail that has already been lost in exposing the film or processing it. Shadow detail is harder to judge in 35mm than say medium format, but because it can be lost through the photographic process anyway, or by choice, nobody can really argue it's wrong so long as there is some black somewhere (generally speaking). 

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5 hours ago, Stealth3kpl said:

This is exactly what I'm looking for, thank you. I recall someone on the forum a few years ago saying something along the lines of don't treat it as you would a digital file.

In what way would you clip the blacks? Just bringing in the black slider on levels?

Pete

Pretty much, but I used the curves dialog instead. Drag the black point until blacks are visibly crushed in non-important areas (like dark clothes). Then lift the midtones a bit (or a lot). The highlights you can keep as is, or since it's a well exposed+developed negative and you have some leeway, you can brighten them a bit without clipping. In curves you can apply an S-curve for more extreme midtone contrast. Usually though, I find that with good, low contrast negatives (which is what I develop towards too), just an upswept part around the midtones is enough, and you don't need to protect the highlights with a more aggressive S-curve because they still have lots of headroom.

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5 hours ago, Stealth3kpl said:

. I've had it in my mind that I should be doing as little as possible having taken time to get good contrast in the negative then scanned to not clip anything. I see that I shouldn't be worried about clipping blacks too much (which I suspected was my problem) and that getting the scan is only the start of the story.

Everybody does that at first. Good negatives and scans are still a great starting point because they give you the most freedom in editing/printing. A low contrast neg prints in the darkroom much easier to any contrast, but trying to bring back a high contrast one can be a struggle.

So keep working as you have, I see you get nice full histograms will plenty of leeway on shadows and highlights. Then, for the end result, don't hesitate to clip the shadows, and increase contrast even if you lose detail. Your goal is not the most detail possible, but the most visually striking image, and this doesn't always go hand in hand with shadow detail. Also remember than any kind of paper can accommodate a much narrower dynamic range than your film (or even some screens). So you'f be giving up some shadow detail anyway.

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"Using Photoshop" really means primarily using Camera Raw, right? That's roughly similar to Light Room (ignoring the archiving features of LR)

The big difference, in this type of thing, is that after it's finished in CR, it goes to PS, which has Levels, which, when combined with Curves, I find a really useful tool in scanning.

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Yes I like to try to keep my pp to curves but I should open my mind a bit. I sometimes feel "structure" can introduce artifacts, and I'm wary of "contrast" and "dehaze" losing my midtones. I'm trying to get as natural a curve as possible. My limited experience with tmax was pretty much find the black and white points and you're done

Pete

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Here's mine - using PS since the original is jpg, not raw, but with LR-available techniques:

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1) Set black and white points with Levels. In LR, use the BLACK and WHITE sliders.

Remember that holding down the ALT/OPTION key while using the sliders allows one to see exactly where the clipping is occuring, and how much. I set black to produce black only in the very darkest folds of dark pants, and whites to show white only in the dust specks ;), the very brightest edge of the white cap's brim, and a few random grain speckles in the sky.

2) Curves: add a slight overall "S"-curve to increase midtone contrast without affecting extreme highlights/shadows. Guided by woman's forehead at right - bright causcasian skin should be in the 190-210 brightness range.

3) Curves: Select non-sky areas. Add a "Shepherd's Crook" curve to increase contrast (curve steepness) only across the highlight values 180-220 - this de-grays the faces and hills and brings out the 3D facial structures.

KEY POINT: No single contrast adjustment will produce a good picture. Neither film nor pixels can tell a face from a rock from a cloud, so it is up to the photographer to treat them individually and separately. "Just the way the film or sensor saw it" is for web-cams, not photography. ;)

4) Highlight-only dodged the legs, again to bring out 3D form.

5) Highlight-only dodged man at left, and face of outdoorsy tanned tall man.

6) Midtone-burned sky, and vest of woman at right, to add local separation to "flat" monotonal grays.

7) Creative option - added slight vignette to corners.

Interestingly, when I then selected Auto Brightness/Contrast, PhotoShop made no change. It like what I'd done.

Now, this just gets to a full-toned picture from which one can then add one's own creative interpretations. I might personally add more contrast and punch, or sky burning, or dodge the man at left even more, and so on and so on. But it isn't my picture.....

 

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Hi Pete

I pretty much only edit my photos (whether colour or b&w) in Adobe Camera Raw. It's great for colour corrections (much better than Photoshop imho) and it's great for adjusting things like black points etc.

In a photo shot on an overcast day like yours the image will of course look quite bland with low contrast. The tricky thing is how to punch it up while keeping it looking natural.

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My workflow on a b&w image is to begin with the black point. Pressing Alt is key (hahaha) to seeing where the clipping hits. Normally I accept clipping, sometimes a lot, provided it doesn't appear where I don't want it. So in a scene like yours I would be ok with clipping in the dark clothes. But the benefit of crushing a few blacks there is that it moves the histogram to the left which means it is possible, using the Shadows slider, to bring back detail in the dark clothes. As you can see on the screenshot I've lifted that a lot.

Then I do the same but the reverse with the Whites and the Highlights. I normally try to keep the white point just at the edge of the histogram. I'd rather crush blacks than clip whites, usually. I'd do that particularly in a photo like this where the sky easily looks very boring if the histogram begins cramping up to the right. It becomes a bit of a tug of war between the Whites and the Highlights sliders, in that having first moved the Whites slider as much as possible to the right and then brought back detail in the sky with the Highlights slider, it becomes necessary to again push the histogram to the right with the Whites slider. Usually it's possible to accept a few areas of blown highlights in the sky without affecting the texture of the sky area as a whole.

The last thing I do is play around with Contrast and Clarity. For some images Contrast is better and for others it's Clarity. Here I used both to achieve what I think is a pleasing balance between the two halves of the histogram.

Btw, I almost never touch the Exposure slider.

Good luck

Philip

Edited by philipus
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1 hour ago, philipus said:

Hi Pete

I pretty much only edit my photos (whether colour or b&w) in Adobe Camera Raw. It's great for colour corrections (much better than Photoshop imho) and it's great for adjusting things like black points etc.

In a photo shot on an overcast day like yours the image will of course look quite bland with low contrast. The tricky thing is how to punch it up while keeping it looking natural.

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!

My workflow on a b&w image is to begin with the black point. Pressing Alt is key (hahaha) to seeing where the clipping hits. Normally I accept clipping, sometimes a lot, provided it doesn't appear where I don't want it. So in a scene like yours I would be ok with clipping in the dark clothes. But the benefit of crushing a few blacks there is that it moves the histogram to the left which means it is possible, using the Shadows slider, to bring back detail in the dark clothes. As you can see on the screenshot I've lifted that a lot.

Then I do the same but the reverse with the Whites and the Highlights. I normally try to keep the white point just at the edge of the histogram. I'd rather crush blacks than clip whites, usually. I'd do that particularly in a photo like this where the sky easily looks very boring if the histogram begins cramping up to the right. It becomes a bit of a tug of war between the Whites and the Highlights sliders, in that having first moved the Whites slider as much as possible to the right and then brought back detail in the sky with the Highlights slider, it becomes necessary to again push the histogram to the right with the Whites slider. Usually it's possible to accept a few areas of blown highlights in the sky without affecting the texture of the sky area as a whole.

The last thing I do is play around with Contrast and Clarity. For some images Contrast is better and for others it's Clarity. Here I used both to achieve what I think is a pleasing balance between the two halves of the histogram.

Btw, I almost never touch the Exposure slider.

Good luck

Philip

Thanks so much for this. I'm assuming you start by inverting the curves in order to make it a positive. 

I can't seem to do enough in CR and eventually end up using Levels in PS. 

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7 hours ago, bags27 said:

Thanks so much for this. I'm assuming you start by inverting the curves in order to make it a positive. 

I can't seem to do enough in CR and eventually end up using Levels in PS. 

Or scan it as a positive, or in PS use 'Invert image' to turn a negative into a positive. The advantage of scanning as a positive is you see the preview image and get a better idea of how flat a curve you want with the final scan.

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I'm not sure I know how to invert the curves, to be honest :huh: How is that done?

12 hours ago, bags27 said:

Thanks so much for this. I'm assuming you start by inverting the curves in order to make it a positive. 

I can't seem to do enough in CR and eventually end up using Levels in PS. 

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6 hours ago, 250swb said:

Or scan it as a positive, or in PS use 'Invert image' to turn a negative into a positive. The advantage of scanning as a positive is you see the preview image and get a better idea of how flat a curve you want with the final scan.

I'm assuming that's on a scanner, of course, not using a camera for that? I'm using my CL.

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48 minutes ago, philipus said:

I'm not sure I know how to invert the curves, to be honest :huh: How is that done?

I find this a lot better than dealing with curves in PS, which I might later use. Easiest to show. Start at 3:45

this one's for color, although a much older version of CR, the principle is the same:

 

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Ah I see, thanks Ken. I didn't know that was possible (!) and now I understand what you meant by 'positive' image.

I scan my black and white directly to positive; here are screenshots of my normal settings in Vuescan if that's of interest. For C41 I scan "linear raw" (also shown in that link) in order to invert/create a positive image in ColorPerfect. I find CP to be the solution that most consistently (and most quickly) gives a good base from which to make further colour corrections.

Best

Philip

2 hours ago, bags27 said:

I find this a lot better than dealing with curves in PS, which I might later use. Easiest to show. Start at 3:45

this one's for color, although a much older version of CR, the principle is the same:

 

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7 hours ago, bags27 said:

I'm assuming that's on a scanner, of course, not using a camera for that? I'm using my CL.

Ah yes, correct, a scanner, I didn't pick up that you'd changed the subject in a thread about scanned images, silly me. But there is software available as a PS plugin, such as ColorPerfect that will convert negative to positive for you, or as I said use the 'INVERT IMAGE' button in PS to convert a negative to a positive or even a positive to a negative, your choice, it's all at your fingertips.

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