pyro and scanning

[bruce watson]

I'm curious about how well a negative developed in one of the

pyrogallol developers scans. Does the stain cause any difficulty? Does

it help or hurt with grain aliasing? Does the stain vary in color, and

thus make it more difficult to drop from RGB down to grayscale for

printing?

 

I'm particulary interested in the comments of people who have

experience with 4x5 Tri-X, PMK, and drum scanning.

[c_p_goerz]

I scan my pyro negs in then drop the RGB to make it a grayscale

then do the contrast and brightness adjustments. If I need to add

print colour after that I change it back to RGB and adjust the

curves.

 

 

CP Goerz

[per_volquartz1]

Scan in 48 bit RGB. Then change to grey scale. Then change to 8 bit RGB. Dodge and burn if needed. Adjust image color and contrast using Vivid Details, a Photoshop plug-in.

[jim_galli4]

I suppose I'm not a serious scanner since I only scan low res for crt and not for printing. FWIW I like to scan as rgb pos. In PS 5.02 I invert which gives a bluish purple scan. Then I go to the hue / saturation slider and set the hue at about 168 to 173 which turns things brown/yellow, and set the saturation at about -85 to 90%. Just a hint of color remains then on the crt and they take on a kind of <a href="http://tonopahpictures.0catch.com/AncientBristlecone.html">warm platinum look.</a> So I never totally abandon rgb for grayscale.

[john_hennessy1]

My method is to scan in 48 bit RGB positive. Then I use channel mixer to convert to neutral. I do not simply convert to grayscale because that just uses a preset channel mixer and whatever it was preset for, you can bet it was not something as strange as a pyro neg. Besides, channel mixer leaves the image in RGB without converting back and forth and can be done in 48 bit.

 

A more elaborate method is to copy each channel separately to a different layer in a new document and then adjust the opacity of each layer to suit. That's tedious but can be automated. The downside is that it can only be done in 24 bit.

[c._w._dean]

I have made very nice scans from Tri-X, PMK, negatives. Here is the abbreviated workflow focusing on the details in question and excluding most everything else. Scan RGB 16 bit, import to Photoshop converting tiff file to PSD file still in RGB. Open Channel Mixer and load a saved Channel Mixer setting courtesy of Dan Burkholder from his book on Digital Printing (Google search Dan Burkholder for his website). The Channel Mixer settings were customized by Dan especially for Pyro stained negatives and the results please me more than any method I have tried.

Settings in Channel Mixer Dialog:

Check Monochrome Box which makes the Output Channel Box say Gray.

Set Red slider to +115, Set Green Slider to +23, Set Blue slider to -31, set Constant slider to 0. Save and name setting for future use.

I have rarely had to tweak this setting.

Apply Levels and/or Curves as desired in 16 bit before converting to 8 bit RGB and final conversion to Greyscale.

Burkholder has already done the homework!!!

[john_hennessy1]

<Settings in Channel Mixer Dialog: Check Monochrome Box which makes the Output Channel Box say Gray. Set Red slider to +115, Set Green Slider to +23, Set Blue slider to -31, set Constant slider to 0.>

 

I am going to try it; if that's what Dan says he's thought it out. Does he say anything about different film? I.e., do those numbers work for TX, HP5 or whatever?

[c._w._dean]

"Does he say anything about different film? I.e., do those numbers work for TX, HP5 or whatever?"

 

He is not that specific, it's a short piece that more or less says, "Try this for a pyro stained image." It works for me with TX, HP5, & Bergger 200.