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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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    M
    mfraser3
    Participant
    November 5, 2015


    Two simple requests for Lightroom:

    1. An 'Invert' command. Many of us use Lightroom to manage our film scans, and currently have to go through Photoshop to invert (CMD-I) to process our negatives. Staying within LR for this would be hugely helpful (reversing the RGB curves works, but results in all of the sliders working backward).

    2. A per-channel 'Auto' button for RGB curves. One of the key parts of converting colour negative film scans to positive is to correct for the orange film mask, and this involves maximizing per-channel contrast (and snapping the neutral mid tones). This currently requires a roundtrip into Photoshop.

    Adding these two features would make Lightroom THE preeminent tool for processing film scans (other RAW processors do offer per channel contrast maximization, but not invert). Photoshop would still be used for other important tasks, but the primary workflow could be entirely within Lightroom.
    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    November 1, 2015
    Thomas Geist wrote, "Gunter, just invert the curve and you're done."

    There are two serious issues with this:

    1. After inverting the tone curve, the other sliders work backwards, which is confusing if you also work with positives.

    2. Due to the non-linear nature of the Develop module's image-adaptive controls, inverting the tone curve gives much different results than doing the inversion in Photoshop. See this thread for more details: https://forums.adobe.com/message/8067...
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    October 29, 2015
    Gunter, just invert the curve and you're done. You can even save an inverted curve as a Preset.
    A
    Anonymous
    October 29, 2015


    Lightroom is useless because it doesn't handle B&W negatives of which I have over 5000. (it lacks the inversion facility to get a positive image)
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    October 29, 2015


    The requests for more precise point curves, possibly with a larger display as well as levels in other threads are is not so far fetched. I want to add another little function to it, that would prpbably be super easy to include (even in its late state as a public Beta): invert.

    Why all this? Take a look here: http://theagnosticprint.org/future-of...

    Considering all the tools and functions LR already has, it's just a small step short of being the #1 software for dealing with negatives. "Not much film shot these days" you say? True, but there are vast amounts of negatives out there waiting to be digitized. Read this article and you will understand. The scanning days (especially in the higher end segment) are cming to an end since the hardware starts dying down and replacement and sewrvice is not much lnger availavble.

    Still there is a huge legacy of negatives out there, some of it of incredible importance. Digitizing via DSLRs / MF camera backs seems to be the way to go. Ans LR has almost everything needed to be the tool for it. again - the article makes my point clear.
    J
    jeffk5545Author
    Participant
    October 29, 2015


    I don't own Photoshop, only Lightroom 4. I want to digitize hundreds of 40-year-old legacy B&W negatives, using a Nikon D4 or D800E, a macro lens and a Nikon ES-1 slide copy attachment. I want to maintain a 16-bit B&W RAW (NEF) workflow. No roundtripping a super-large TIFF file LR4 > PS > LR4. I want the equivalent of a Photoshop Filters > Adjustments > Invert option at the **beginning** of my RAW workflow, so that I can process a positive image, rather than a negative image, ideally with all the sliders working as if the starting image was a B&W positive image to begin with. Ideally, this could be implemented as a RAW image import preset. Let me know if this functionality can be added: Jeff Kennedy Thanks!
    N
    nfredrik
    Participant
    October 29, 2015


    It would be great with an "Invert"-button/command in Camera Raw, when working with reproducing negatives, (shot by camera instead of scanned) otherwise you have to do more of the correction/editing in Photoshop.
    J
    joep7405150
    Participant
    October 29, 2015


    I'd love to have an invert or negative check box in LR. This would be very helpful for working with scanned B&W film as DNG. While your at it if there was a color negative tool for inverting colors and removing color cast from scanned color negative film as DNG you'd make even more friends!
    R
    R Schuster 2
    Participating Frequently
    October 12, 2015
    Brilliant!
    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    October 12, 2015
    Note that the develop sliders will now work as expected with respect to the positive image.
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