LR- Duplicate inverted image but retain RAW benefits

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
August 4, 2020
2 replies
450 views

I am shooting a lot of vintage negatives of film. I invert the negative-image in Develop with curves, to create a positive-image.

I would like to import these 'positive-images' as duplicates into my Library, so they can be affected by Develop sliders... without the developments having to be in-the-negative.

When you invert an image... the result is a positive.... but if you slide the EXPOSURE slider in Develop to brighten... you have to slide to the negative... to increase the exposure. This makes it tricky when you are working with hues.

I can export everything as TIFFs... and reimport, but I lose other RAW features and benefits.

A virtual copy won't do the trick.

Any ideas?

Problem or error

This topic has been closed for replies.

johnrellis

Legend

Many people have asked for the ability to invert negatives within LR:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/inverting_in_camera_b_w_negative_scans_to_positives_lr4_feature_request

Please add your constructive opinion to that feature request and be sure to click Vote and Follow in the upper-right corner. That will make it a little more likely that Adobe will consider implementing the feature and you'll be notified when they do. (Safari users, uncheck the option Safari > Preferences > Privacy > Prevent Cross-Site Tracking or use Chrome or Firefox.)

Re Negative Lab Pro, there's a long, detailed discussion about it in this thread, including comments from the developer:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/negative-lab-pro.40004/

"I lose other RAW features and benefits"

What do you see as the benefits?

You might consider a workflow of processing the negative in PS and saving as a 16-bit TIFF. One person in the feature-request thread above reports that doing so loses some detail in dark shadows, but Todd Shaner reports excellent experience using PS. See his article: Scannerless Digital Capture and Processing of Negative Film Photographs

[Use the blue reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

"I lose other RAW features and benefits"
What do you see as the benefits?

I'm wondering about this too.

A 16-bit tiff derived from a raw file that contains all the information in the negative should be as good as a raw file.

My suggestion is to use Edit in Photoshop, invert the image using a Curves adjustment layer with the Color negative preset, which does a pretty good job. And while in Photoshop, I would retouch any dust and scratches, which is done much more easily than in Lightroom. If there is a lot of dust, Lightroom will slow down to a crawl.