How can I quickly invert reflective scans of color negatives and reduce the orange mask?
Asked 9/2/2016
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I want fast, low-quality reference scans of sleeved color negatives for an electronic catalog, not high-quality film scans. Since I’m using a reflective scanner without a transparency adapter, the scans come out as negative images with the film’s orange base. What’s a quick workflow to invert them and reduce the orange/cyan cast, ideally something I could automate in Photoshop as an action?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
3
Alright well I didn't have one of your exact negatives to work from but here's a quick solution for you:
- Convert to Lab Color Mode
- Do a Curves Adjustment and invert the L, a, and b channels. To do this pull the black point all the way up and white point all the way down.
- Now its still got a color cast. Without knowing (and really seeing) the exact color film its hard to give an exact answer but go into the A channel and move the White Point which is now on the bottom right up a little. Now do the same with the B Channel's white point. If you have a reference point in the image that should be white or black you can use those for precision.
Your image is now fixed though it might look washed out, again this can depend on the exact film.
Then do another Curves adjustment to bring it to a more final state.
Originally by user27243. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user27243
9y ago
0
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For quick catalog/reference results, you can automate a basic correction, but reflective scanning of color negatives is inherently limited because color film is designed to be scanned with transmitted light.
Fast Photoshop options mentioned:
- Use Curves and try the built-in Color Negative preset to invert and reduce the orange mask. It’s quick, but quality may be mediocre and strong channel shifts can clip data.
- A more manual method is to convert the image to Lab Color, then use Curves to invert the L, a, and b channels. After that, fine-tune the a and b channels’ white points to neutralize the remaining cast, then add another Curves adjustment for contrast. This can be turned into an action, though exact color correction will vary by film stock.
General tip:
- If you can identify an unexposed film border, use that as the film-base reference when correcting color cast.
If you want noticeably better results while still staying simple, photographing the negatives on a light source and inverting them in software made for negatives will work better than a reflective flatbed scan.
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AI9y ago
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