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

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
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.

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timreeves

Participant

4k x 6k is 24mp
So to effectively scan at this resolution on a modern digi cam with a cfa we need a minimum of triple that resolution.

Most modern digital cameras are around 24mp, so 3 to 4 shots per frame stitched with a perfect lens should get you close to kodaks figures.

We still need an invert function, and this request is almost as old as lightroom.

Jack_2

Participant

Take into account that 35mm. color negatives of 100-200 ASA films have an effective resolution of not more than 2000x3000 pixels. Color slides of the type of Kodachrome 25 have higher numbers but not much more than approx. 4000x6000 if professional lenses have been used.These numbers were found by the Kodak people that researched the resolution necessary to digitize color negatives when they were doing the concept research for Photo CD scanners in the early nineties.
You can use high-rez cameras or scanners, but you are not capturing pictorial information, just patterns of grain and unsharp airy-discs.......In microscopy this is called empty magnification. Here I would call it empty resolution.

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RoyBDigipix

Participant

I'm looking at digitizing thousands of color negatives to digital files via a high-rez camera. I would love to have an invert color option within Camera RAW. What better way to preserve old film that with a RAW digital file! Even better with a feature to eliminate the color cast of the film. I think many PS users would embrace it. I could see this being a huge draw for entry level users as well, as many are trying to figure out what to do with old negatives that are deteriorating.

kbarre

Inspiring

The only current solution for editing negatives is to invert the curves, export the images, and then re-import into Lightroom. But this isn't possible with RAW files. It would be awesome to be able to select an "Invert" button, and then have all other functions of Lightroom work exactly the same, so that high quality capture of negatives using a macro lens would be possible.

henriko72124252

Inspiring

I too would love an invert feature when using my DSLR for scanning film negatives into raw files for later edits all within LR. As pointed out many places, inverting the tone curve is not that useful, as many other treatment controls are then inverted, and making contrast adjustments in tone curve is also still inverted.

The solution to export and reimport tiffs with an invert curve preset is noted though as a workaround. But I like to have only my raw files if possible, nothing else - hence the wish for an invert switch in the develop module. Thanks.

If anyone else could use this feature, remember to vote at the top of this page.

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FeedbackCommunityMember

Inspiring

Can you please add a simple "Invert Colours" function to the develop module? I take a lot of Solargraph images which I then scan as a paper negative and its frustrating to load them into Photoshop only to invert colours - since LR develop module has much more intuitive funcionality for the remainder of my processing

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ohnoezitasploded1

Participating Frequently

Yup. This seems like a simple fix that would be hugely helpful for my workflow