Scanning Colour Negatives with Vuescan

[mihalis_papanikolaou]

<p>Hi all,<br>

I'm struggling to start scanning a bunch of various old negatives for 3 months now. I've been through every single thread, tutorial, question manual I found on the net and ofcourse this present site. I followed every tip, guideline and advise in order to success in 1 good scan from my Canon 8800f but with no luck. I tried canon s/w, silverfast, colorneg and I ended up in Vuescan (after reading douzens of reviews).<br>

The main point is to scan a tif file of every frame import it to lightroom and adjust it inthere. I don't want to use photoshop (it is complicated for me) and i want to avoid canon s/w since it gives me low level scans. For the above purpose I bought a Q60 it8 target (slide) in order to calibrate my scaner.<br>

1. My first attemp was to follow the advanced workflow of VS as per various advices. Scan a black piece of film in neutral colour without filters in 48b, generic film etc. The result was mediocre<br>

2. After that I calibrated my scanner following VS manual and used the icc profile in the above procedure. Red colours were too bright and fluorecent.<br>

3. I created a new icc profile with Scarse which when I assign it in photoshop and converted to adobeRGB i have a great result in the scanned it8target (slide) but negatives again look like crap. Following Roger Smith's (hope he is reading this) advice i run into <a href="http://www.jingai.com/scanningguide">www.jingai.com/scanningguide</a> and took every signle step.<br>

4. My last attemp was to follow this procedure <a title="blocked::http://www.kodachromeproject.com/forum/showthread.php?t=558" href="http://www.kodachromeproject.com/forum/showthread.php?t=558">http://www.kodachromeproject.com/forum/showthread.php?t=558</a> and end up with an acceptable tif after proceessing it in lightroom.<br>

QUESTIONS<br>

1. Start from scratch using my it8 target (slide) as a guideline is it necessary and how?<br>

2. Do I need to assign icc profile during scaning in VS and if yes in which stage, when locking the film base colour or after that during the normal frame scanning?<br>

3. Is someone kind enough to write down a step by step proceedure for negatives scanning in vuescan and provide some help?<br>

Paliakos</p>

[roger_smith4]

<p>1. No.<br>

2. No.<br>

3. For old negatives where no neutral reference exists I'd just follow the Vuescan advanced workflow and output ordinary 48 bit TIFFs in AdobeRGB or ProPhoto. Instead of color balance none you can use color balance manual and set the overall balance by right-clicking on a neutral area (paper, gray building, etc.) in one of your shots done under daylight. Keep that setting for the rest. Then dump the file into Lightroom and do the rest from there. </p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>IT8 calibration is only for reversal (slide) film. There is no general way to calibrate negative film, except on a one-time basis by photographing and analyzing a standard color chart (e.g., X-Rite Color Checker). You can set the white balance reasonably well if you place an high quality grey card in one of the photos. It is rare to find anything actually neutral in a photo unless you put it there by design. </p>

[mihalis_papanikolaou]

<p>I ll do some scans and I ll post them within the day for further reference</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>I'm always a little perplexed when people do scans in Vuescan, save a base file, then switch programs for the production of finished files. Have you tried saving a Vuescan Raw File, and then pseudo scanning within Vuescan, using that file? Here's the topic "Using Raw Scan Files" from the Vuescan help documentation:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc14.htm#topic11">http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc14.htm#topic11</a></p>

<p>That said, the <em>scanner</em> is a big factor: I find it much easier to get good color scanning with my Coolscan V and Vuescan, vs my Minolta Scan Elite 5400.</p>

<p>In the Input Tab I ensure film type is color neg, follow the advanced workflow (per you), initially output a Vuescan Raw File (tiff format, 16 bit rgb), and then scan-from-disk with Vuescan with that file.</p>

[szrimaging]

<p>Not to sound mean or something, but a simple question first. Is your monitor calibrated? If it isn't, you could be getting accurate scans and just not seeing it properly.</p>

[alan_rockwood]

<p>How do commercial processors color balance negative scans?</p>