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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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    Eric Bowles
    Participating Frequently
    April 24, 2020
    Agreed - the whole point of LR is to have an efficient, non-destructive workflow.  IF a plug-in from another company can handle this feature, it's a prime candidate for Adobe to add this feature to LR.  While I own Elements, the last thing I want to do is needlessly have to create a TIFF and go to Elements to edit a basic negative.
    Todd Shaner
    Todd Shaner
    Legend
    April 24, 2020
    "Extra hits don't mean anything to me."

    Steve, but it does to everyone else replying in this post. What you're suggesting is a destructive workflow. The request being made here is for a true raw data invert function internal to LR that does not break the non-destructive workflow.
    L
    Linwood Ferguson
    Known Participant
    April 24, 2020
    Steve, not sure which direction you mean.  If you mean that you don't mind going through the invert-to-positive-TIFF, OK, I get it.  And that indeed works fine, just more disk, more circuitous. But it works.  If that's your desire, great.  Doesn't mean that is the only possibility.

    If you mean more work in LR to invert manually, it's more than just more work -- it breaks valuable features.   If you take that argument to the extreme, why use lightroom at all, just do everything in bridge and photoshop.  Many of us have been there, it works fine, it's just a lot of work.  Adobe knows how to fix it, they have said so.  It just isn't on the top of their list.

    LR became so popular by being a convenient, non-destructive workflow.  Being able to do the inversion properly as a part of the LR workflow would be a useful addition to many of us.  Like other things ... say books for me... it might not get used by others.  But I suspect none of us use all of lightroom. 
    stevel24076854
    stevel24076854
    Participating Frequently
    April 24, 2020
    You know what Linwood?  I don't really care if I need to click 10 times as long as it works.  I can understand that red eye does not work, and facial stuff does not work, but if the invert works then it works.  Nobody likes to click so many times, but I am a software engineer, used to clicking many times for everything I achieve and I do not complain about a few clicks as long as it works.  We code, and when we do it takes somewhat 3 to 7 characters to make one thing work.  So I don't complain about how many times I need to hit my keys.  We hit our keys so much, we use gaming keys which are heavy duty and we type 110.  Extra hits don't mean anything to me.  
    L
    Linwood Ferguson
    Known Participant
    April 24, 2020
    Steve, what people are asking for is for Lightroom to invert the tone curve early enough in the develop process that the sliders work correctly afterwards.  I think we all realize we can drop out of ACR/LR and invert and save as a TIFF -- but it's SO nice to have a non-destructive workflow with efficiently sized files.  

    The mechanics are mostly there -- you can do this with manual inversion, but because it is late in the process the sliders are then all strange, and features like facial recognition, red-eye fix simply do not work.
    stevel24076854
    stevel24076854
    Participating Frequently
    April 24, 2020
    Eric, Romualdas, Anthony, 

    I gave you this solution, above:  Get Photoshop Elements (PSE) which works with Light Room. 

    In Elements, go to Filters > Adjustments > invert.  That will invert your negatives to positives.  And, yes, Adobe is reading and learning from you.  

    Steve Lehman, mcse   


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    Eric Bowles
    Participating Frequently
    April 24, 2020
    There is obviously a need for this function.  A third party has developed a plug-in - Negative Lab Pro - to convert negatives to positives. https://www.negativelabpro.com/  
    R
    RomasBudras
    Inspiring
    January 1, 2020
    Please, please support working with negatives! All the workarounds for working with negatives (inverted curves, LUT profiles, plugins like NegativeLabPro) break some essential functions of Lightroom Classic, for example, face detection doesn't work on such images.
     

    Antoine HLMN
    Antoine HLMN
    Known Participant
    August 15, 2019
    They do not take photographers feedback very seriously, you know 😕😕
    stevel24076854
    stevel24076854
    Participating Frequently
    August 15, 2019
    To get a Negative to a Positive in PSE, click Filters>   Adjustment>   Invert.  
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