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jeffk5545
Participant
January 27, 2012
Open for Voting

P: Ability to invert negative scans to positives (color and black-and-white)

  • January 27, 2012
  • 167 replies
  • 8261 views

I would dearly like to see the Lightroom 4 Beta team implement an additional feature in the final release. That feature would be the ability to take a camera+macro lens image of a B&W negative -- essentially a camera-based scan of a negative -- and invert the negative image to a positive image at the beginning of the development process in such a way that the resulting sliders in the LR4 Develop Module would not operate in reverse. As I understand it, this capability exists in Photoshop, but I don't own Photoshop. I do own Photoshop Elements 9, but that program only supports an 8-bit workflow, not 16-bits per channel, and round-tripping between LR & PSE9 requires the reimportation of a TIFF file that is more than twice the size of my NEF RAW files. Since this programming wizardry already exists in Photoshop, I would think that it would be a relatively simple matter to transfer and adapt that code for LR4 -- but then, I'm not a programmer, so what do I know...

I've been digitizing 40-year-old Kodachrome slides from my Peace Corps days in Africa, using a 55mm Micro-Nikkor (macro) lens, coupled to a Nikon ES-1 Slide Copy Attachment, and even on a D300s body, I can get truly excellent results. I can't wait to continue that work using the pending 36 megapixel Nikon D800 body with an upgraded f/2.8 macro lens (mine is the old 55mm f/3.5 design). I really, REALLY want to be able to camera-scan my many B&W negatives without having to generate huge intermediate TIFF files.

You can respond to this request by emailing me, Jeff Kennedy Thanks, in advance, for taking the time to review and consider my request. I LOVE Lightroom 3, and from what I've seen, I'm going to love LR4 even more. I REALLY appreciate the effort that Adobe takes to solicit input from the photographic user community.

BTW, if the feature I request *can't* be implemented right away, could the LR support team provide detailed, interim instructions as to how to use the "backwards" sliders, and in what sequence? That would be very much appreciated. I'm sure many older LR users have considerable analog image collections that they would like to digitize, and doing so in-camera is both 1) of surprisingly high quality, 2) MUCH faster than using flatbed scanners and 3) of much higher quality and resolution than flatbed scan and MUCH cheaper than professional drum scans.

    167 replies

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    drtonyb
    Legend
    November 13, 2025

    If inclined to work with DSLR or Mirrorless scanned film negatives and are happy to work with them converted to TIFF positives, give the free Photoshop plugin called Grain2Pixel a try. I have found that it does an excellent conversion from my NEF files, although I would much prefer to work in a RAW workflow.

     

    D
    drtonyb
    Legend
    October 27, 2025

    Adobe has lost again.

     

    I see ON1 Photo RAW 2026 introduces Colour Negative and B&W Negative modes which, in the case of colour negative, inverts and removes the base colour at the very beginning of the processing pipeline.

     

    Exactly what LrC users have been asking for over more than a decade and totally ignored by the Camera Raw team.

     

    Adobe is rapidly being left behind to become a dinosaur of photo processing.

     

    What does it take for Adobe to listen to its users and respond appropriately? Maybe their share price to fall to zero.

     

    As for Negative Pro Lab, thanks but no thanks. Reading the documentation, first you have to "Convert" your RAW negatives. I read this as once converted you are no longer working on RAW files. Next, you are limited to the NPL adjustments, but if you want to use LrC, you can save a copy (TIFF or JPEG, no longer RAW) and edit that. Not a RAW workflow.

     

      MarkGilvey
      MarkGilvey
      Inspiring
      October 27, 2025

      Get on their forum; it's a lively group. The first time I tried it, I had issues too, but that's behind me now. Nate, the software engineer, is also very helpful and is reachable.

      B
      badbluesman
      Inspiring
      October 26, 2025

      I just tried Negative Pro Lab and found it very unsatisfactory. The default conversion setting produced a very contrasty result compared to tethering my GFX camera into LRC via the Fuji Tether app. So I used the sliders to adjust the file to my taste, but the tonality seemed weird and not anything like my original GFX file imported into LRC. I zoomed into the cloud area and notice that the film grain looked swollen and blotchy and there were some areas that were completely blown out to pure white. I tried further adjustments but couldn't restore those blown out areas. The image had a very degraded look when zooming in. Yuck!

       

      For now, I'll stick to my custom processing preset in LRC for reversing negatives to positives.

      B
      badbluesman
      Inspiring
      October 26, 2025

      I just downloaded it. I have known of it for awhile and been skeptical because I have read poor reviews of the hardware that they are selling for camera scanning Film holders, LED light panels, etc. I use a Fuji GFX camera, a Rodenstock Digaron HR macro lens and a custom-built film holder with two different LED light panels (one for B&W negatives and one for color transparencies). But I am ready to give Negative Lab Pro a try now.

      MarkGilvey
      MarkGilvey
      Inspiring
      October 25, 2025

      Until that happens, there's Negative Lab Pro plug-in. 

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      badbluesman
      Inspiring
      October 24, 2025

      I have been using LRC for museum quality black & white film negative scanning since 2017.  LRC really needs a somple command to reverse a negative to create a positive.  Many of the leading digital cameras now tether directly into LRC and many people are using this feature to capture film negatives with their cameras..

       

      To convert negatives to positives I have created a workaround that is less than ideal: I built a custom processing preset, in which I used the curve tool to make the inversion by pulling the upper right corner of the curve down to the lower right, and then pushing the lower left corner up to the upper left. I also added a maximum desaturation adjustment, since my negatives are monochrome.

       

      The main problem with this arrangement is that further processing of the image is less than perfect. You have to pretend that shadows are highlights and blacks are whites. That in itself isn't difficult. But the quality and character of adjustments such as clarity, contrast, shadows and highlights suffers. The adjustments just don't look they way you would expect if you were applying them to an original positive image. In some cases, I export a reverse positive image and then re-import it back into LRC so that I can apply the kind of adjustments I am used to using in LRC. However this method often increases noise in images where film grain is prominant.

       

      It would be so great to have a simple INVERT command like the one in Photoshop.

        johnrellis
        johnrellis
        Legend
        October 25, 2025

        While waiting for Adobe to implement this, you might check out Negative Lab Pro. There have been many good reports about it in the Lightroom forums. (I've never used it.)

        MarkGilvey
        MarkGilvey
        Inspiring
        August 7, 2022

        Dear Adobe, 

        I am processing a lifetime's worth of color and greyscale negatives. Life would be much better if there was another mode in the spirit of Color and Black&White, call it Negative or Negatives. And rename the sliders, so they make sense. I'm using Negative Lab Pro right now, which is a wonderful app for doing this, but it seems that more could be done on your end to accommodate those of us who are digitizing old negatives. Don't you think it's time? It's time. Let's reverse the current status and make it happen!

          E
          ebimichi
          Participant
          February 23, 2022

          To the Lightroom product development team. (Because I couldn't find any other place to convey this request.) Do you know "NEGATIVE LAB PRO"? I want you to buy this company and equip it with this function as standard equipment immediately. Please consider it.

          AxelMatt
          Community Expert
          AxelMattCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          February 23, 2022

          Do you have ask Google?

          I've found this 

          Negative Lab Pro

          Negative Lab Pro Review | 5050 Travelog

          Negative Lab Pro Tutorial - YouTube

          and much more.

           

          What's the reason Adobe should by this firm? I think it's better that such firms stay independent. 

          My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo
          TheDigitalDog
          TheDigitalDog
          Inspiring
          February 18, 2022
          Is there the same possibility in Camera RAW as in Photoshop to make the image negative (Ctrl+I) this would be a great solution to convert my color negatives into a positive image.

           

          Yes, you can invert them, no, no provisions for dealing with the orange mask. In LR/ACR Curves, you can produce this same effect as Control I in Photoshop (a simple inversion). Photoshop also has no provisions using this command to deal with the orange mask. Black becomes white. 1 maps to 254, etc. Again, just a simple inverse of the numbers alone. 

          Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
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