Neil Snape Photographer

Quick guide to scanning negative films with Linocolor 6

Linocolor scanned negative & positive film comparison

There are many ways of achieving similar results albeit of a lesser quality. A quick way to do this is to scan the negative as a positive with your transparency film profile. Scan with the normal automatic base density but no ColorAssistant. Save this scan out as a normal finescan in either your working space or Lab. When you open the image in Photoshop first go to 16bit mode then invert the image. Open the levels and hit the auto button or go in and bring the sliders in to the start points of the data on each of the three channels. Adjust it until the colors are approximative. Validate then go for another round of curves to tweak the image until it looks right. Often this method gives you a quick colorimetric simulation of the negative/contact sheet image but clips out quite a bit of detail causing banding and grain.

Another approach is to adjust the base density using the above method but it's rather difficult to judge on screen as it is a negative film previewed as a positive , orange mask and all. The calibration scan shown here was corrected to match the print scan. It coul well be that the corrected image from the calibration scan was closer to the image data in the negative, more "open" yet when there is a print to use as reference it's another choice of defining the final image.

comparison 3 images enlarge

1 - calibration scan - Photoshop corrections

2 - positive scan - Photoshop reversal

3 - print scan no corrections


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