Scanning negatives Epson V550

[Monkeyspill]

I’ve scanned black and white and slide film (on a Epson V550) and it was pretty straightforward. But I haven’t got a clue how to deal with the orange mask on colour negatives.

 

So far everything is coming out really blue and dark and I’m left trying to sort it out in Photoshop with no real idea how it should look. Is there some sort of formula (or setting) for dealing with the orange mask?

[FishyFish]

Are you using the supplied Epson Scan software? It should remove the mask automatically as long as you have the film type setting as "Colour Negative Film".

 

Otherwise, If you're just scanning them as positives then you can either fix it all manually in Photoshop (which means you'll need to fiddle about with the colours), or use a plug-in to do it (e.g. http://eigakai.ro/ps-action/cn-scan-inversion or https://www.negativelabpro.com/).

[Monkeyspill]

On 12/07/2019 at 09:19, FishyFish said:

Are you using the supplied Epson Scan software? It should remove the mask automatically as long as you have the film type setting as "Colour Negative Film".

 

Otherwise, If you're just scanning them as positives then you can either fix it all manually in Photoshop (which means you'll need to fiddle about with the colours), or use a plug-in to do it (e.g. http://eigakai.ro/ps-action/cn-scan-inversion or https://www.negativelabpro.com/).

Late reply, but I’ve been scanning film at 4800dpi then sharpening and reducing the image size in PS (hoping to avoid too much scanner noise). Is this a complete waste of time and memory?

 

For negs I’m now using the auto adjust settings (colour restoration I think it’s called) which seems to do the trick for the most part.

[FishyFish]

1 hour ago, Monkeyspill said:

Late reply, but I’ve been scanning film at 4800dpi then sharpening and reducing the image size in PS (hoping to avoid too much scanner noise). Is this a complete waste of time and memory?

 

For negs I’m now using the auto adjust settings (colour restoration I think it’s called) which seems to do the trick for the most part.

 

I only scan at 2400dpi. I found that anything higher than that just resulted in bigger files but no apparent extra detail. I've seen some people claim that scanning at a much higher resolution and then resizing can offer improvements, but I didn't see anything myself.

 

I've not had much satisfaction with getting the colours right, so now resort to lab scans for colour (except for slide film as that costs an arm and a leg to get devved and scanned as Filmdev don't process E6 and other labs charge a lot more for scanning).

[Monkeyspill]

58 minutes ago, FishyFish said:

 

I only scan at 2400dpi. I found that anything higher than that just resulted in bigger files but no apparent extra detail. I've seen some people claim that scanning at a much higher resolution and then resizing can offer improvements, but I didn't see anything myself.

 

I've not had much satisfaction with getting the colours right, so now resort to lab scans for colour (except for slide film as that costs an arm and a leg to get devved and scanned as Filmdev don't process E6 and other labs charge a lot more for scanning).

I suspected that was the case. 10000x10000 pixel images just take up too much space.

 

I've been letting the scanner software auto adjust then tweaking it in photoshop until they look ok. I'm sure the colours are not the same as they would be if properly scanned though. Strong reds have been coming out as oversaturated and too magenta.

 

Slides I find a lot harder. As often not they will scan really blurry and I can see dark details in the slide that the scanner can't pick up.

 

Black and white are easy and come out really well.