Manual inversion methods for scanned negatives

[hansvons]

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@LocalHero1953 maybe that might interest you (and anybody else). I recently fell prey to Luminar’s current offering with a substantial rebate. I never liked their interface, the absurd sky replacement schemes and whatnot. However, they improved things and now offer a truly new approach to photo editing. Despite all this, their colour science is pretty good. Converting negs via an inverted curve and WB is as easy as it gets. Plus, in the colour tab, there’s a tool called colour cast. Great white, grey, and black neutraliser. 

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[LocalHero1953]

6 hours ago, hansvons said:

@LocalHero1953 maybe that might interest you (and anybody else). I recently fell prey to Luminar’s current offering with a substantial rebate. I never liked their interface, the absurd sky replacement schemes and whatnot. However, they improved things and now offer a truly new approach to photo editing. Despite all this, their colour science is pretty good. Converting negs via an inverted curve and WB is as easy as it gets. Plus, in the colour tab, there’s a tool called colour cast. Great white, grey, and black neutraliser. 

Thank you! I've downloaded it to try, and exported a negative from LR as a tiff.

Obviously in half an hour I will miss some obvious things and make some obvious mistakes, but I noticed:

• I tried the white balance dropper on the negative base border. It simply turned the border a different shade of orange. To avoid getting hung up on this, I did the same thing in LR before exporting again.
• I did a simple curve inversion. It produced slightly different colours (perhaps better?) to LR, though I would still want to set the RGB 'white' and 'black' points individually for each colour. I couldn't see a way to do this automatically with a simple click - LR cannot either, but I understand C1 can.

I tried again by importing a DNG file directly into Luminar. The white balance dropper worked perfectly this time.

I still couldn't see a way to automatically set ROGB 'black' and 'white' points individually. This by far the slowest part of inverting a colour negative in my process. It would push me towards C1 if the other elements of the Adobe ecosystem were not so attractive (and I don't want to pay for both!)

I have a month before I have to cancel to recover my money. I will keep exploring.

 

Edited July 20, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[hansvons]

4 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I tried the white balance dropper on the negative base border. It simply turned the border a different shade of orange.

I’d use the WB picker on something that is supposed to be bright grey/white in the picture and not the oranged-masked border. 

[LocalHero1953]

My further explorations have led me to a solution within the Adobe metaverse that avoids manually adjusting RGB 'black' and 'white' points individually.

One of the settings for the Photoshop Curves/AutoTone tool is 'Enhance Per Channel Contrast'. Click this and Auto, and it sets the individual RGB end points automatically. The setting needs to be made each time you use the AutoTone tool on a new image, but that is simply dealt with by creating a PS Action to be applied to each  image. 

The next step is to incorporate this action into a batch process. Once done for a roll of film, I can import the .psd files into Lightroom for normal cataloguing and further editing (perhaps turning them into tiffs). 

Edited July 21, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[250swb]

After all this time and effort doesn't $84 for ColorPerfect as a Photoshop plugin/filter sound cheap?

 

[LocalHero1953]

28 minutes ago, 250swb said:

After all this time and effort doesn't $84 for ColorPerfect as a Photoshop plugin/filter sound cheap?

 

Yes, but where would be the fun in that? I've learned a lot more about Photoshop and Bridge in the last few days that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
My mind has two compartments: one that enjoys taking photographs for their own sake, and the other that enjoys cameras, lenses and digital stuff. This is all about the latter.
Even so, if there's a free trial of Colorperfect, I will get it.