Introduction
Would you like to maximize the quality of your scans of negative film in Linocolor 6?
Well here's a summary of how to do just that. A little background in the associated problems with negative scanning will help prepare you for better scanning.
Negative films are made to compress the scene (photo) in a way that when expanded (print) reproduces the rendered scene perceptually. There are more steps to this positive films as interpretation lies after development but before the final print is made. The compression onto the film is in fact between a range of density much less than positive films. The latitude of reproducible tone remains very elevated though almost always higher than positive films.
An orange mask remains after processing which has to be extracted digitally. This mask has very different characteristics depending on the brand, film base, sensitivity, and processing.
Exposure has a huge impact on the achieved densities in the negative film. Flare also effects the entire film color and of course is proportional to the amount of flare on the film.
This is where it gets interesting. Since color negative films where designed to be used in reversal printing , scanning is a whole new approach. Whereas getting a neutral print is a matter of adjusting the complimentary (and/or primary) colors in the enlarger which lets the curves crossover in a balanced fashion, the notions in scanning use similar but independent rgb curves. Where you place the points in the curves change the gamma and saturation of the resulting image along with the color balance.
What is gained in negative scanning over scanning a print?
As much as I like the smoothness of the print, the same smoothness is the result of passing through the enlarger lens and paper surface. Grain becomes blurred to the point of not being recognized. At first glance you may prefer the look of the print that you're used to seeing , yet , if you look with a loupe , you'll see the detail that is lost when printing. After doing side by side comparisons , you might scan more, print less.
To be noted about grain when scanning in Linocolor are two important points.
First never use the scan bed preset sharpening. Never, ever (except on a Tango or Primescan). Either scan and filter before saving , or bring in a tiff and sharpen after Photoshop retouching /corrections. Most of the flat bed scanners need a bit less light contour than dark, intensity according to the output repro, pixel size small, and smoothness in the lower values. Combined works well when there are skin tones as it sharpens high contrast zones and softens large similar valued areas. This degree of control is available only in Linocolor.
Second noise from the minimum current in the ADC will rapidly multiply when clipping end points trying to bring reasonable contrast gain from the narrow density range of the negative. This can be avoided, as you will see in the following instructions, by leaving the range open, and correcting in 16bit mode in Photoshop. Linocolor 6 doesn't allow saving out in high bit format.