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

[jeffk5545]

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.

[Todd Shaner]

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?

[stevel24076854]

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]

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]

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]

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

[MikeJamesMedia]

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.

[JohanElzenga]

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.

[drtonyb]

No good Johan!

Although inverting the tone curve does do the job of changing the negative into a positive, it is at best a 'kludge' to overcome a serious deficiency in Lightroom that has been requested by customers and ignored by Adobe for the past 6 years.

I can photograph a film negative with my macro lens and a slide copying attachment - works very well, producing a raw copy. Importing into Lightroom, I apply the negative tone curve to get a positive. Making a few more adjustments, being mindful of the reversing of some develop adjustments, I can get something that looks pretty reasonable.

Now I'd like to apply a preset to give the image a different look - oh crap! Only one tone curve can be applied, obviously, and now my negative tone curve has been obliterated, making my image a punchy negative. Not a good look!

This is why Lightroom needs a real NEGATIVE control, so that the develop adjustments aren't all screwed up and we can still apply presets as normal.

How hard is this? Has Adobe only got one programmer working on Lightroom who is completely overwhelmed by the volume of bugs and very good ideas being reported here.

Come on Adobe wake up. Six years is far too long for a very sound feature to be implemented in Lightroom. It's not difficult - just about every image editing tool has a NEGATIVE function! Why not Lightroom?

So sick of the Adobe ignoring its customers, but still taking our money and using us to test their sloppy programming, only to be mostly ignored when we report problems that should be fixed in a very short time frame. The silence from Adobe says it all - don't care as long as you mugs keep paying.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

With the 7.3 release of Lightroom Classic and addition of profiles, Adobe have almost given us the ability to invert negatives in Lightroom. We can create inversion and color correction LUTs in Photoshop then bring those into Lightroom as profiles for one-click inversion and color correction in Lightroom! The sliders still work backward, but no more messing with the Tone Curve.

http://www.cuchara.photography/blog/2018/5/one-click-inversion-of-color-film-negatives-in-lightroom

[Todd Shaner]

Jeff, can you post a share link to a few of your LUT based film profiles? This will allow others here using camera film capture (self included) to give them a quick try. Thank you!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Here are a couple of sample profiles created using Portra400 outdoors. I am doubtful that these will work for someone else because I think the LUT will be dependent on your particular scanning setup, but it will be interesting to see what happens. For my test, I was able to use one of these 2 profiles to color correct about 90% of the images on 3 different rolls of film. The other images were under different enough lighting conditions, i.e., indoors and pre-dawn, that the profiles did not apply.

I have found that the negative MUST be white balanced under the Adobe Standard profile before applying the inversion profile. I use the unexposed frame outside the image for white balance.https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bSkl6lNTxeoXGAxEBEnMb4xWIzE3IRg2

Paste the XMP files into a folder in the location below, then restart Lightroom and they should appear in the Profiles Browser under the heading "Sample Film Negative Profiles".
Windows: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\SettingsMac:/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Settings

[Todd Shaner]

Jeff, thanks for sharing this information. I was able to get a reasonable image rendering using your Portra 400 profiles with various color negative films. However, it required making some extreme Tone adjustments to remove excessive highllght and shadow clipping. Also the LR WB eyedropper doesn't work properly when clicked on neutral color areas. I had to adjust the WB controls manually. My film capture setup uses a 5500K color temperature Canon Speedlite and Canon 5D MKII and 600D cameras. Not sure if your profiles are camera model dependent, but if so that would explain what I'm seeing.
LUT based profiles are definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully Adobe will also pick up the ball and implement a raw file invert function to fix the backwards control operation.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Todd,
Thanks for trying them out, but as I suspected, these profiles are specific to the negative scan process. I think you will find that the profiles produce much better and more consistent results if you create them yourself from your own negatives. After going through the process a couple of times, it is very quick and easy. And once created, those profiles will work for every roll of that film stock scanned under the same conditions.

Also, you cannot auto white balance on the inverted negative. It seems like it should work, but the Adobe SDK on profiles said that the profiles are applied at the end of the image rendering process, so the white balance tool is still seeing the non-inverted image.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It’s great that the new profile structure opens another door for this task.

But in all other ways I no longer hold my breath for any implementation of inverting images (besides the curve trick we all use). Why?

After one year Adobe still hasn’t made LR compatible with HEIF / HEIC image format - the format produced by the most used camera on the planet (iPhone).

That should make clear how low on the scale a wish from a group as small as us here is.

If inverting is ever implemented, I’ll be happy. But I’ve stopped waiting a long time ago..

[Todd Shaner]

Also, you cannot auto white balance on the inverted negative. It seems like it should work, but the Adobe SDK on profiles said that the profiles are applied at the end of the image rendering process, so the white balance tool is still seeing the non-inverted image.

Yet another reason for Adobe to do some additional work and fix both.

[johnrellis]

"Also, you cannot auto white balance on the inverted negative. It seems like it should work, but the Adobe SDK on profiles said that the profiles are applied at the end of the image rendering process, so the white balance tool is still seeing the non-inverted image."

What if you did the inversion with the profile's HSV look table rather than the RGB LUT?  The SDK documentation says that the HSV look table is applied earlier in the image pipeline, so maybe it's applied before any of the Develop settings.  If so, then you could do white balancing and the sliders wouldn't be inverted?

I only have a fuzzy understanding of how one might create such HSV look tables in this instance, though.

[Todd Shaner]

Since Adobe is the developer and owner of the DNG specification it shouldn't be too difficult for them to implement a raw data invert function that doesn't also invert the LR controls. The primary issue is how to implement this capability AND maintain compatibility. Some more info here: http://dcptool.sourceforge.net/DCPFIles.html

The processing pipe
So, this is how, in vastly simplified form, you process your raw data in context of a DNG Camera Profile, assuming the Forward and Reduction Matrixes are not present (see the specification for more detail😞

    
    1.Linearize, rescale, do black level compensation, clip, etc.
    2.Derive interpolated ColorMatrix and HueSatDelta matrixes based on the color temperature.
    3.Get to an XYZ (absolute color space) via the interpolated ColorMatrix.
    4.Convert to HSV.
    5.Apply the interpolated HueSatDelta mapping table to get new colors.
    6.Convert back to XYZ.
    7.Do your exposure compensation, fill light, etc in whatever color space you want
    8.Convert to HSV, apply the LookTable and ToneCurve, convert back. Or, if I read the spec right, use the LookTable and the ToneCurve as the basis for your adjustment settings

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Feature to invert negatives. Can do in desktop but not in mobile app.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Thank you all for the comments on my parallel comment, which was merged to this one.
To address a few points:
1. I use a self-made negative/slide scanner made out of wood, lighting and a canon 7d. Once I upload to the computer, I transfer to my mobile via network drive;
2. Yes, you are able to use the curve to invert the negative into positive. However it would be great to have a quick button (function) to make the process faster. Imagine, I have over 500 negatives. To do this into all via mobile is not smart.
Thanks again.
Regards
Rodnei

[JohanElzenga]

Did you remember to make a preset for that curve? That is almost as quick as a button.

[Antoine HLMN]

Event though, all the other sliders are then « inverted ».
I’m not sure how the sharpness and noise reduction algos cope with such images...

[Todd Shaner]

I've encountered no issues with color or B&W negative film. Noise Reduction works well to reduce grain visibility. Sharpening typically requires higher settings, but also works well. Fine-grain 35mm film shot with a good lens looks a live camera shot. The biggest issue in LR is dust spot and scratch removal. The Spot Removal tool is pretty crude and slow compared to PS's Spot Healing Brush with Content-Aware Type selected.

[drtonyb]

Thanks John,

I have used the process outlined here https://www.iamthejeff.com/post/32/the-best-way-to-color-correct-c-41-negative-film-scans and find it very good. So getting a good result in Photoshop is quite easy. I have used this procedure in Photoshop to create a LUT and then a Camera Raw profile for a few different negative colour film types. The results in Lightroom are reasonable, but with Lr develop adjustments working on the negative, the tone adjustments are reversed and many others cannot be used because they produce wild colour shifts, such as vibrance and saturation. The white balance and auto tone tools are useless too. A bit of manual adjustment of WB works. Here is an example of a DSLR 'scanned' film negative with one of my profiles applied.



And after a bit of adjusting



It would be so much better to have a tool or tool set that could do these steps natively in Lr so that all the develop tools can be used normally on a raw image.

A negative tool has been asked for by users for 7 years now and it is so disappointing that Adobe hasn't even given those users the courtesy of responded to the requests. Not even to say 'No we will not be implementing a negative function'. Just nothing, completely ignored. Like myself, there are many photographers with considerable archives of film negatives who are experimenting with DSLR 'scanning' to digital raw and would dearly love to process them in Lr. It's hardly rocket science, with a good starting point being an invert option coupled with a remove film mask colour cast (not by changing white balance) so that all the Lr develop tools work as normal.

[stevel24076854]

Anthony,

With all the help above, there should be some hints of what to do, but I will say again:  To invert a negative you can do this in LR or Elements too. 

Once you have the negative, click Filer>Adjustments>Invert. 

This will reverse the negative to a positive.  Your positive should respond to any other adjustments in Photoshop (later on that).   Likewise, refer to my answer above and to Todd Shane's answer too. Both of us utilize the Epson v850 scanner.  This scanner gives positives in crisp color and not much needs to be adjusted and all of them will be right-side-up and frontward (label in front).  It takes 12 at a time which is a little work but worth our time. 

Also, I use a 50 slide scanner (3X more expensive) which takes twice as long to scan all 50 but is easier, all 50 slides are negatives, then I invert them to positives.  It's become a routine with a quick zap of the color or fade adjustments, takes less than 2 seconds in a routine.  The 50 slide scanner has a "fog" on each slide as it doesn't scan the best but this can be eliminated and sharpness comes back to a crisp positive with a few quick clicks.  The 50 slide scanner has its faults as it can break down some after 2 years.  It can be fixed for 1/3 of its sale price which is still a little expensive. I am using my old 50 slide scanner for the 5th year as I am getting it refurbished (one time) this year to use for another 3 to 5 years.  We use it for customers at work and its been used for 2000 slides at a time, maybe 3 times now, otherwise, small batches.  Over that scanner, I will recommend the Espon v850 for the best in scans.    

This might be why Adobe has not responded to you.  Elements and LR and Photoshop have always had Filter>Adjustments>Invert for negatives to positives.   When you get used to Photoshop, you will see that the adjustments of the image is fast and easy.  Have a good eye for it so that when its enough quit your adjustments, otherwise, it could run ya stir crazy, don't need to be that perfect.   

Remember all slides are set for a 2X3 foot screens (in the old days) which were in 3000 resolution for the big screen.  Their size will convert to a 4X6 or 5X7 easily.  I scan my photos at only 1000 so they will fit onto a disc better.  The positives converted to a 4X6 at 300 dpi, as follows:  Slides at actual size (1.34" X 0,83") at 1000 dpi, are the SAME SIZE as 4x6 at 300 dpi - they are exactly equal.  Your Photoshop does batch conversions for this.  Look in elements under File>ProcessMutilplePhotos.  In that dialog box, you can convert to 4X6 size AND to 300 dpi size at the same time, AND keep at TIFF (RAW) for photo prints, OR convert from TIFF to JPEG if you want a slide show.  For a slide show, be sure to make them 4X6 size JPEG (at 300 dpi) so the screen will show them big enough.  AND, don't use a slide show software which only sets them to a show and  nothing else.  Instead, just put them info a folder, and in Windows Media Player select the folder and it'll run your photos as a show on screen.  Also, your TV might have a USB port which will run the photos automatically the same way, no slide show software needed and you don't need Windows media player.  The TV has all you need to run it from a flash drive on the TV.  

I have the experience since I have done this for my customers a lot.   
I hope all of this has helped some of you.   

Steve Lehman, mcse   

[drtonyb]

Steve,

I'm fully aware of what Photoshop and Elements can do regarding inverting a negative image, but I use Lightroom Classic to process my RAW images and I'm certainly not interested in buying a dedicated scanner. For my purpose I have a scanner, my DSLR a macro lens and a slide copying attachment, a combination that does a great job.

Lightroom does not have an invert function and that is what has been asked for here for more than half of Lr's life. Sure, there are workarounds that can invert a negative image, like inverting the tone curve or applying a profile, but all suffer from the same problem - reversed or unuseable tone adjustments. These methods are just trying to overcome Lr's basic deficiency, no proper invert tool. There are certainly no tools to properly deal with colour negative film 'scanned' into a RAW image.

Here is a 1:1 comparison of a RAW 'scanned' film negative processed in Lr and the same image processed in Photoshop. On the left is the image processed in Lr using a profile I created (in Photoshop and Camera Raw) and applying some manual develop adjustments. On the right is the same RAW image after opening from Lr into Photoshop, applying the same profile in Camera Raw, saving the result back to Lr as a PSD, then applying White Balance and Auto Tone adjustments. It might be difficult to see clearly in the small image here, but the quality of the two images is chalk and cheese, especially in the shadows, where the PSD image has blocked up almost everything to black. The PSD image is actually quite awful.



So for me, neither Photoshop nor Elements offer a satisfactory solution. The solution is obvious and I would think, not very difficult. Adobe just chooses to remain deaf and silent on the request, and that's very disappointing.