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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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    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 21, 2018
    There is, or at least you can simply make one: create an inverted curve, so a curve that goes from top left to bottom right. Save it in a preset.
    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    M
    MikeJamesMedia
    Participant
    April 21, 2018


    Hello Lightroom team! It would be quite handy for me, if there was an "Invert" command in the Develop module of Lightroom. (especially for B&W images) Please?

    Thank you.
    Todd Shaner
    Todd Shaner
    Legend
    April 16, 2018
    Steve in your reply earlier you said, "Could you go over this camera procedure again.  I guess I could put one of my 5 cameras to use.  Like Jack's, my v850 is a good one but I agree it might be a tad slower than your camera procedure.   So now I am interested in your speedier concept, rerun it?" 

    Sounds to me you might like to give scannerless film capture a try, correct? I replied with a link to detailed information and materials to do so. No one's asking you to change your workflow.

    Also the two OPs could care less that some users don't see the value in using camera based film capture. They've both made a simple request that would be very useful for anyone using a scannerless film processing workflow:

    Ability in LR/ACR to Invert the Image data and have the Develop controls operate normally and not reversed.

    Most of the "high-quality" film scanners (Nikon, Minolta) have been discontinued. Users seeking high-quality and expedient film scans can assemble a scannerless system very inexpensively. More details at the link I provided and on the Web. ;>)

    Todd Shaner, ACP & Champion
    stevel24076854
    stevel24076854
    Participating Frequently
    April 16, 2018
    Todd,  

    Yes Todd, I see what I wrote before, as you rerun it.   I was only confused for a minute by the way everyone discussed it, as it was like all of you are saying the same thing in different ways.  Do you insist that we use your studied system and device?   We may in the future, but not for now.  Me and my company of partners looked it over with our employees (already, and we all think it's much like what we're doing already but with a different device.  We're not dumb-bells, we're a group of software engineers invested in many companies and we happen to have every Adobe Photoshop or Light Room versions, since invented.  We admire what you studied and developed and we may use part or all of it, or none of it.  Meanwhile, we'll refer back to it as needed.  For now, we have lots of devices we use that might be different than yours, proven to process multiple slides, negatives, and much older transparency formats, that cannot be processed by your device, and we do ours very quickly with precision, and it saves us lots money and time.   Our demographics is 45+ and they have very old photography.   If we changed to a different device or system such as yours, which is different than our own, we'd have to spend time and money on new training.   That's our conclusion.   Thank you for sharing.   

    Steve Lehman, mcse   
    Todd Shaner
    Todd Shaner
    Legend
    April 14, 2018
    Yes right Todd, some how in all this confusion, I thought a camera was involved in someone's  scan process.  You describe a scanner like many we have, like your Plustek 7600i.
    Steve-The article Mark Segal and I co-authored describes using a camera to capture film images. Please go to the Dropbox link and download the folder containing the two article PDFs and other materials for further details on the "scannerless" process Mark and I use. Let me know if you have any questions.
    stevel24076854
    stevel24076854
    Participating Frequently
    April 14, 2018
    Yes right Todd, some how in all this confusion, I thought a camera was involved in someone's  scan process.  You describe a scanner like many we have, like your Plustek 7600i.   We finally used a v850 multi-feed with a dual light, dual optical system, produces a quality negative or slide.  Being in a company, everything is built for speed with multiple feeders and then we get calls for 120, brownie film from the 1950's plus 4x5 and 8x10 formats and transparencies.   
    Todd Shaner
    Todd Shaner
    Legend
    April 14, 2018
    Be advised that up to 4x5 a 4x6k scan is sufficient to capture the effective information in the sheet film. Technical camera's use a bigger diffusion circle (airy disc) and thus, the spatial resolution of sheet film is lower than 135 and 120 film.
    Jack, it can be argued what scan resolution is required to provide the highest-level of detail capture. There is no arguing that  a 1.0 megapixel camera and a 100 megapixel camera take the same exact amount of time to capture the film image and that is less than one second! With a traditional scanner the same 100 megapixel scan will take ~100 times longer than the 1.0 megapixel scan. From my testing the camera capture results using a diffused light source are superior to a film scanner exhibiting lower grain, dust, and scratch rendering. Here's a 1:1 view example of a Plustek 7600Ai scan file and Canon 5D MKII camera file about the same resolution. The same degree of sharpening and noise reduction was applied to both images.

    Click on the image to see it full-size for comparison. I was both quite shocked and pleased at the same time after running this test. My Plustek 7600Ai film scanner hasn't been touched in years....any buyers?

    Todd Shaner
    Todd Shaner
    Legend
    April 13, 2018
    Steve, at the link to the other post I provided a Dropbox link to an article Mark Segal and I co-authored on Luminous Landscape. You can download the article and a detailed instructions PDF along with other materials for processing camera capture color negative film files. I've included a 35mm Fujicolor Super G100 color negative captured with a Canon 5D MKII 21mp camera for comparison.

    Camera film capture using a diffused light source provides better definition and lower grain than using a film scanner. This is covered in the LULA article with a picture example using a Plustek 7600i scanner and Canon 5D MKII 21mp camera with Sigma 50mm macro lens.

    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u5pnzbesvqen1hv/AABZyaWAn33jCwEinkT45iFAa?dl=0
    2
    2Pop
    Participating Frequently
    April 13, 2018
    Well I disagree with that. Modern medium format camera (Hasselblad or PhaseOne) with high-end macro-lens put the Tango on his knees...
    stevel24076854
    stevel24076854
    Participating Frequently
    April 13, 2018
    Vbus,
    Anytime a drum scanner is used, it's much better than a typical digital scanner.   
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