Neutrino
This issue drives me to despair on a regular basis. Not only that, but I’m actually really angry about it. I’ve tried absolutely everything, but nothing really works – surely there must be a sensible way to do this? Judging by the many photos of negative film I’ve seen online, it seems I’m not the only one struggling with this. A few people, however, do manage to produce excellent, colour-accurate results that don’t require hours of post-processing.
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I don’t really have any problems when scanning transparency film. Everything actually looks as it should. If you do occasionally notice a noticeable colour cast, this can usually be logically explained by the available daylight or ambient light and is already present in the transparency material itself.
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With negative film, however, you’ll rarely get anything decent without extensive post-processing. Every image has some sort of colour cast, and it’s not even consistent. In other words, the first image is green, the next one is red. Even though it’s the same film, the same lighting, and so on. At some point, it just drives you mad.
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My hardware:
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Reflecta RPS 7200 for 35mm films
Epson 750V for medium format film
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Software:
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Device-specific software programmes Cyberview and Epsonscan
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Vuescan
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Silverfast AI Studio 8 for RPS 7200
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Silverfast AI 6.6 for the 750V
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Colorneg (Colorperfect)
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On Silverfast: This programme is surely regarded as THE scanner software par excellence!? Yet you can’t even find a film profile for the new Portra 160 and Portra 400. Furthermore, the colour profiles are largely incorrect. In terms of colour, completely different profiles often work better. Emphasis on ‘better’, because that doesn’t mean they’re correct either. The only exception – and truly the only one – is the Portra 800. I don’t know why, but the Portra 800 looks really good with the Portra 800 film profile. The colours are pretty much spot on in at least 90% of all photos. Otherwise, though, it’s nothing but a nuisance! If Silverfast hadn’t been included with the Epson and I hadn’t received Silverfast Studio 8 from Reflecta as compensation for a warranty repair that took over nine months, it would annoy me even more. The software is anything but cheap!
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Vuescan doesn’t really get the colours right either. However, it’s neither outrageously expensive nor does it promise you heaven on earth. Furthermore, you can use one programme for all scanners. I can accept that in terms of value for money, but it doesn’t solve the colour problem either.
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The Colorneg plug-in for Photoshop looks the most promising to me, but unfortunately I haven’t had much luck with it yet either. I like the approach of scanning the film as RAW first and then carrying out the processing; that way, you can always go back to the basics. Furthermore, you can run the RPS 7200 in automatic mode and don’t have to process and scan every image individually first. It’s just that the colours don’t look great either. There are thousands of film profiles available (even profiles for push processing), but what’s the point of all that if the colours still aren’t right? You can fiddle with the colour sliders, but what’s the point of these profiles then? Also, I find the compression of the highlights rather unattractive at times.
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Has anyone here managed to get the colour issue under control? Do you have any tips for me? I’d be over the moon if someone could tell me a method that actually works. I don’t mind whether it’s with Silverfast, Vuescan or Colorneg. As far as I’m concerned, I’d even be happy to photograph a grey card with every film roll. Even if I had to tinker a bit with one photo, but could then apply the colour settings to other photos on the roll, that would suit me fine. I just don’t fancy having to heavily edit every single photo because every colour cast is slightly different. I’ve recently started experimenting with colour enlargements. Even there: finding the right setting is tricky, but once you’ve found it, all the other photos on the roll – or even on a whole type of film – work with those settings. So why on earth doesn’t that work digitally as well?
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Junkom
Well, I know what you’re getting at, and I’ve spent ages trying to figure it out myself – unfortunately, there aren’t really any perfect solutions where you just press a button and it’s done.
At least, I haven’t found one yet. I’ve been scanning myself for 10 years, and I’ve noticed time and again, both during my studies and among colleagues, that everyone has their own way of doing things ;)
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So, I adjust the colours using the Levels tool in Photoshop; unfortunately, I only have the English version, so I can’t give you the German term for it, but it looks like the scale that shows you the tonal value. When you open this, it shows you the range for the RGBs. I always scan very softly, with no sharpening, no additional contrast and so on.
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Then open the scanned image, look at the Levels, and use the option in RGB to adjust each channel/colour individually – for example, red – and then drag the arrows at the bottom left and right of the curve to where it starts. Do this for every colour and then voilà, in 95% of cases you’ll have a perfect image and will only need to make minor adjustments at most.
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It sounds like a lot of work, but with a bit of practice it’s done very quickly; you can also do it straight away whilst scanning, i.e. when you select the image and drag the mask.
I always use the standard Epson scanning software.
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Sorry, even though I’m a professional photographer, I don’t have an easier solution either, which is why I also shoot on film and work in the darkroom, only scanning when I absolutely have to.
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All that technical madness usually drives me crazy...
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The Hasselblad Imacon has quite decent auto-correction, but you’ll get the best results by tweaking the levels yourself...
But that thing costs a fortune and doesn’t always make sense – 8x10 inches, phew, you’re better off scanning that quickly with your Epson 750 ;)
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Regards
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p.s. I just quickly scanned a picture; as I said, after scanning, about a minute’s work in Photoshop, not even that – Portra 400 with an Epson 700 Photo camera, an old Rolleiflex 2.8F. See the image below.
Neutrino
Hello Junkom,
Thanks for your quick reply.
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Your sample image looks really good for a processing time of just one minute! The highlights aren’t blown out and there’s still detail in the shadows too. I like it! If I could get 90% of my images to look like this in such a short processing time, I’d be happy.
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I also carry out the tone correction (Levels) for each individual channel in Silverfast. The problem is that neither the automatic tone correction nor I know the exact point where to start. Often, the histogram doesn’t just consist of that one ‘main peak’, but also has a few tiny peaks in the darker and lighter tones. So where do you start? With the ‘main peak’ or the first ‘mini-hill’? I’m sorry I can’t explain this any more professionally. I must admit, however, that I haven’t tried this approach in Photoshop yet. Perhaps it works better there.
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grommi
Why on earth is Silverfast supposed to be *THE* scanning programme par excellence? Because it’s being hyped by a single ‘know-it-all’ scanner salesman and is only sold as a single licence at a rip-off price? Professionals use something completely different anyway; at Heidelberger Druck, they’d probably laugh their heads off at the idea. I had a version supplied with the 8800F on my computer for exactly 10 minutes. It just didn’t work. Since then, I’ve only used Vuescan Pro. It’s a bit of a faff, but it works pretty well.
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Forget all the film profiles; they’ll only make you miserable. I just let Vuescan calculate the film mask, which works quite well. Profile: “generic”. I adjust all the other settings manually in Vuescan itself – black point, white point, gradient and RGB colours – all by eye. Your eyes are the best measuring tool. The same goes for ‘calibrating’ the monitor; I don’t rely on any little programmes for that either. The pros will be smirking again now, but they use a completely different calibre of hardware to us with our amateur kit. Histograms and colour curves etc. are welcome as aids, but my eye is the final judge. Just like in photography ;-) Files created with Vuescan often need a bit more saturation in the final touch-up, but that’s just a minor point.
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With a bit of practice, I usually only need a few clicks or perhaps 1–2 minutes for the settings. “Artistic” interpretation can, of course, take longer. The scan is then saved as a 100% JPG. I don’t need any TIFF or RAW shenanigans, colour space fiddling or whatever. However, the raw scan is done in 48-bit RGB. Minor corrections that are sometimes still needed, such as cropping, straightening or final fine-tuning, I usually do these days using the FastStone Image Viewer. I don’t need any of that complicated and/or ridiculously expensive faff. Common sense, a bit of experience and “manual work” are more than enough for me, and it’s really quick. See example on Paradiesfilm 200.
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I’ve never understood why so many people have problems with colour negatives. Learn to trust your eyes again, rather than some random profiles. Then even an Ektar is a piece of cake.
Neutrino
grommi, thank you very much for your reply too!
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I’ve had far too much trouble with Silverfast to call it *THE* scanner programme. However, apart from the one scanner retailer mentioned, it’s often promoted as *THE* scanner programme by other sites as well. That aside, almost all scanner manufacturers now supply it alongside their top-of-the-range models.
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Getting the colours of a single image more or less right isn’t a problem for me either. Even with Ektar, I haven’t had any more or fewer problems than with other films. What I’m after is a faster workflow and perhaps something like a semi-automated process. When I scan slides from, say, a portrait series in a forest, the green foliage of the leaves can cause a green cast on the faces. Perhaps, for technical reasons, the scanner emphasises blue even more than the other colours. If I now filter out the natural green cast of the leaves as well as the scanner-induced blue cast from ONE photo, I get a colour-neutral image. However, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel for every photo, I apply these settings to all the other images. Since all the other images were taken under the same conditions, they no longer exhibit any colour cast either. If the lighting changes, of course, you would have to find different colour settings again.
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So far, so good, but this simply doesn’t work with negative film. At least, I haven’t managed it yet. One image might have a green cast, the next a blue cast, and the one after that a red cast. To achieve neutral colour reproduction, I’d have to edit each image individually. That alone is very time-consuming, and if you’ve got an untrained eye like mine, every image still looks slightly different after editing.
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So here’s my question: do you really adjust every image individually, or have you found a way to automate the whole process? In other words, once the settings are right, do they work for most images in the same series and on the same film using the same settings?
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grommi
"Do you really adjust every image individually, or have you found a way to automate the whole process?"
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Ah, well, yes... It’s really easy with Vuescan. If you want the settings to be absolutely identical, select "Source" -> "Keep Exposure". Then generate a new preview without changing the crop and select "Keep Film Base Colour". A new box will then appear labelled "Keep colour balance"; select this as well. This locks all the programme’s automatic settings and the manual colour balance. You can even save this setting in the File menu and recall it later.
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I only do this rarely, though, and only for batches under absolutely identical conditions that also have to look absolutely identical.
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PS: “Apart from the one scanner vendor mentioned, it’s also frequently advertised by other sites as THE scanner programme.”
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Yep, scanner manufacturers, software producers and retailers all benefit from it. And the trade press is dependent on all three of them, so that makes four parties profiting from it. Users have to buy VueScan ‘externally’, so the others get absolutely nothing out of it.
Wolfgg
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]Hello,
Here is a Kodak VPS (6010) from 1976, taken with a Kowa Six and developed by myself using Tetenal NK2. Scanned with an Epson 4870 using the standard colour negative settings, then optimised in Fixfoto. Fixfoto has four automatic optimisation options; one of them almost always works well and you just need to tweak it a little. So you can also get good quality out of old colour negatives by scanning them and doing a bit of post-processing.
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Regards, Wolfgang
hallertauBW
Hello everyone,
I also have an RPS7200 with Vuescan. I’ve been puzzled by the built-in film profiles too. Especially the Kodak Portra profiles.
I use the Generic film profile and adjust the colours (individual colour channels) in GIMP using the gradation curve.
For self-developed black-and-white film rolls, the scanner is unbeatable!
Colour management by eye. I don’t need to produce technical images, so the colours can be ‘artistically’ distorted. :-)
Originally, I wanted to do colour calibration using the calibration slide. But... well, the result is only valid for the specific film type used, and the manufacturer isn’t allowed to make any further changes. So I gave it a miss.
@grommi
Is there a better alternative to VueScan? What’s the software called?
Best regards
Guido
Neutrino
Thanks for the replies.
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So no one here has managed to find a proper automated or semi-automated method yet? Do you all just adjust things more or less image by image, by eye?
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I came across another frustrating fact at the weekend. Inspired by your posts, I tried scanning with Vuescan and Epsonscan. Epsonscan doesn’t handle the colours too badly. At least there’s a more consistent colour cast than is the case with Silverfast. You’d still have to tweak the colours afterwards, but I think you could at least process a few images with the same settings. At least, that was my first impression. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it would be slightly better than in Silverfast, where every image has a different colour cast. So far, so good. However, I’ve now realised that both Vuescan and EpsonScan produce scans that are out of focus compared to Silverfast. At first, I thought this was impossible, as the programmes merely process the data from the scanner, but that isn’t the case. I can rule out possible sources of error such as different unsharp masking, a different DPI setting, and the negative having slipped out of the area of sharpness. I’ve carried out countless comparison tests and the result from Silverfast was always sharper. Not by much, but at least clearly visible when you zoom into the image. Whereas with Epson and Vuescan there’s just a green area, with Silverfast you can still just about make out the individual blades of grass. I then noticed that Epson and Vuescan scan the image much faster than Silverfast. I suppose that’s the reason. In Epsonscan there’s a setting that lets you make the scanner scan faster. That option was switched off, though. The same goes for Vuescan. So, someone please explain this to me! All this scanning is slowly driving me mad!
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The best results I’m getting at the moment are when I scan in Raw in Silverfast and then edit the whole thing with Colorneg. That’s where I see the most hope right now. However, I’ll need to do a few more tests first.
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I’m of course still open to tips and suggestions.
grommi
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@grommi
Is there a better alternative to Vuescan? What’s the software called?
If I knew of one, I would have mentioned it. But it also depends a lot on how familiar you are with a particular programme. The settings in Vuescan? are now a piece of cake.
Wolfgg
An automated process can only mean creating profiles; this is the only way to achieve the necessary accuracy in the workflow, which must, however, also demonstrate the consistency required for profiling. A separate profile would be required for each film, incorporating the characteristics of the lighting, lens, film, development and scanner all at once. But that would be a rather complicated affair. Just a few pointers based on experience with colour printer profiling (‘proof printers’):
- A resolution of at least 3 bits per colour is required; for CMYK, this means 12 bits, which equates to 4096 colour patches (= 4 sheets of A4)
- Colour patches must be created using appropriate software and printed on a proof printer; allow to dry for at least 24 hours
- If only "amateur printers" are available, the colour patches must be measured with a spectrophotometer to determine the actual colour location for the profile calculation
- All 4 colour charts must be photographed without reflections (1 chart per shot, otherwise the patches will be too small on film); choose lighting conditions that match those that will be present when the film is later used
- Naturally, the film must then always be developed in exactly the same way in future as it was for profiling (same service provider or self-development)
But one thing should be noted: it is quite possible that the profiling process may optimise away the specific colour characteristics of a film, resulting in images that look as sterile as those from a digital point-and-shoot camera.
Regards, Wolfgang
