don_gallagher

Hi James, yes we often have to "loosen" prints and curled negatives. What I do is create a little humidity chamber using a plastic storage container, a plastic table of about the same size as the container, a warm mist humidifier, and care. What I do is get the humidifier going, then drag the inverted container off the edge of the table to allow the humidity to rise into the chamber. It doesn't take much to deposit a thin coating of water on the walls of the container: you don't want too much or else it will start to "rain" drops on the photos. When the correct amount of humidity is in, then I drag the container back into place on the table, sealing the humidity in. It takes a little practice to get it right so I would test the technique on some less precious photos.

We have been scanning family photos for awhile now, having inherited my grandparent's photos. We are using a V600 which does fine for prints and have also used it to scan old larger negatives taken in the 1920s from my grandfather's Brownie. The V600 does an ok job with these larger negatives (we humidify and flatten the negatives between optical glass for scanning). The 1920 negatives still provide better scans than the existing prints. For 35 mm negatives, we are spoiled in still having a working Nikon Scan 4, so I just scan the entire roll and keep what is appropriate. For my parent's 35 mm negatives, rolls of family event photos could be taken over two years, so I actually find having the entire roll and order to be useful in assigning dates to the photos. For previewing the 35 mm negs with the V600, you could try to sandwich a couple between optical glass, but it seems like you could only do 2 negative pieces at a time that way: that may be too slow for your needs.

I focused on the man and the fog by cropping. Used LR texture and mild dehazing to accentuate the rock wall but keep the fog. Increased R,O,Y saturation to bring out wall colors in the wall

Cropped to minimize centered tree, increased red, orange, yellow saturation, increased contrast, texture, contrast, and dehaze in LR. Added a minor negative edge vignette.