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Inverting Black and white Negative files.


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I shoot exclusively B+W negative film fp4  as I have done for 40 years and I now copy my negatives using a copy set up with bellows and nikor copy lenses on a  digital camera and light box. I have abandoned Photoshop/lightroom and negative lab pro on recommendation from a fellow professional. He shoots only digital. I am struggling to get a decent conversion. I've tried everything and I simply cannot get a decent result. The inverted image is weak and lacks contrast no matter what I do. Any help would be much appreciated. 

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Too early here for me to give a more detailed answer but here is a starting point.

Use the curves adjustment layer to fix the gamma. 

A B&W film negative has all the information but that information is transformed once with the exposure and development of the paper and again with the light shining through the emulsion on the paper. The former is more important than the latter (which can be disregarded).

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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I use a film scanner (Nikon LS 50). The few times I have scanned black-and-white negatives (or positives) they have come out fine using either VueScan or SilverFast.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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32 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Use the curves adjustment layer to fix the gamma. 

I see a way to adjust gamma in the Levels adjustment. If you really meant curves, how would one use that adjustment for gamma?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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17 hours ago, Rory Williams said:

I've tried everything and I simply cannot get a decent result. The inverted image is weak and lacks contrast no matter what I do. Any help would be much appreciated. 

It would help if you provided a TIFF or other lossless version of one of your negatives. Then we could experiment and provide advice based on what you're actually using.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I see a way to adjust gamma in the Levels adjustment. If you really meant curves, how would one use that adjustment for gamma?

Manually and by eye, I use the term gamma to mean the average slope of the midtones.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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It takes such a lot of fiddling by eye to get a decent result. As most negs are different workflow can be slow. I've been using Negative lab pro which is brilliant. 30 seconds to convert a neg. However it only works with Lightroom and I'm happy with Affinity as a program. I don't want to have to return to Adobe. I thought there may be some quick method to get a decent result without having to fiddle with curves and go through the laborious trial and error. I appreciate your suggestions. 

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+1 for Vuescan

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Again, without seeing what you're working with it is difficult to make any  suggestions, Rory. A sample file or two would help us help you.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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The workflow in Lightroom is simple. Open the file. Open negative lab pro. Click Convert. It's done in about 5 seconds. Post adjustments are available before saving it I rarely need to. Couldn't be easier. Whatever it's doing it does a very good job indeed. All my work is landscapes so I usually finish off using silver effects pro. I love affinity and I'm sure if I get more proficient with it I can achieve the same results. I was hoping to avoid to much time fiddling. I apologise for not posting a sample. I live high in the mountains of Galicia and I'm busy getting the old house more wind proof for the winter. 

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5 hours ago, Lagarto said:

My point is that these kinds of conversion processes involving inversion, basic level adjustments and duotone based toning can be saved as an action in Photoshop, which could then be used as basic workflows in negative conversion. Is something like this possible in Affinity Photo at this stage?

You can save adjustment presets, and apply them manually to other images later.

You can also record a macro as you make adjustments, and replay that macro later on another image. If you do that, you can also create a batch job to process a group of images, and apply that macro to each image as part of the batch job.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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11 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I can see that a preset can be created in Develop Persona (as per setting, e.g., use reversed curve to invert the negative), but it seems not elsewhere? Recording macros, on the other hand, seem to crash Photo as soon as Develop is finished... So I think it is more or less manual job at this stage.

No, you can't record a macro during Raw development; sorry for missing that aspect of your question.

For adjustments outside of the Develop Persona, look for the Add Preset button, e.g.,

image.png.f95a5293b6db6d3c7a9419c62acccac3.png

You can access those presets later using the Adjustments studio panel.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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42 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I now noticed that batch jobs actually allow RAW image development and then postprocessing with macros so it seems this could work really well!

Yes, batch jobs can process Raw files. However, they currently do so without applying any of the processing done by the Develop Assistant that would occur if you Opened them directly into Photo. That means that they will start out looking different from how they'd look in the Develop Persona, and will thus Save differently, unless you have disabled all of the Develop Assistant settings.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You can save adjustment presets, and apply them manually to other images later.

You can also record a macro as you make adjustments, and replay that macro later on another image. If you do that, you can also create a batch job to process a group of images, and apply that macro to each image as part of the batch job.

Excellent advise. I can see some late nights ahead to really get to grips with the program. 

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