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Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Photography Discussion => Topic started by: crazyzoarhaina on December 28, 2012, 08:31
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Hello Friends,
When scanning negatives, is it worth it to play with the curves, noise reduction, multi-sampling etc. in the capture software or should I capture the image and do everything later in Photoshop?
Actually, that question is important for me. Kindly give me some tips about it.
Thanks,
photographybyappleart.com.au
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Certainly with B&W on an Epson scanner it is important to set things manually, otherwise it will blow out the highlights and fill the blacks. Also, dust removal/Digital ICE doesn't work with B&W as it misreads some of the silver as dust.
I think auto also screws with the highlights in colour. It does take practice to get things to work manually, but once the scan has cut the highlight data there is nothing PS will do to recover it.
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In addition to the great answer above (blown highlights and filled blacks is exactly what I got the first time I tried to scan negatives), I would also suggest to scan B&W at 16 bit instead of 8 bit; it gives you a lot of headroom for further editing without losing information: 2^8 is just 256 levels; 2^16 is 65k levels, way better.
It's like recording music at 24 bit instead of 16 bit: it makes life easier during mixing/mastering.
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You don't say which scanner you have - my experience is with a Nikon Coolscan although I have used my Epson 3200 for scanning some larger format film that won't go into the 35mm Coolscan.
If you have something with ICE and are using color film, definitely use it as there's no real equivalent after the fact. Other than that, the only thing I'd spend time on is making sure you capture all the detail - avoiding the blown highlights and plugged shadows as Paul mentioned.
In general, scanning film is a very time consuming process if you want a decent end result. You'll need to use Photoshop, IMO, and that's a ton better at almost any adjustments you want to make than any of the scanner manufacturer's products or VueScan. So capture at the highest resolution and bit depth your device can handle, ensure you haven't lost data in the scan and leave all the rest to post processing.
If you're doing this for stock, you may have to downsize considerably to get the agencies to accept the end result.