Capture One 10 for the film photographer
Hello. With just a few tests, I can confirm that Capture One 10 does a really nice job of touching up my film scans. It appears that I can use the typical color, exposure, and tone processing, and the new sharpening does a nice job, without creating halos. The noise reduction can be used to reduce the visual impact of grain, although I would like it to be sequential, before sharpening.
The big issue, always, is the conversion of a scanned film negative ("raw" file) to a positive. Most of us use the ColorPerfect plugin for this, but it means an intermediate stop in Photoshop (where one could simply do all of the other processing.)
I know that technically one could play with Capture One and do an inverse, etc., but that results in a pretty lame file, with all the colors and tones out of whack. What we need is a dedicated control, plugin, preset, etc. for Capture One.
The film photography market is small, to be sure, but a growing segment (consider at the plethora of "film-look" presets.) Any thoughts on a Capture One solution?
The big issue, always, is the conversion of a scanned film negative ("raw" file) to a positive. Most of us use the ColorPerfect plugin for this, but it means an intermediate stop in Photoshop (where one could simply do all of the other processing.)
I know that technically one could play with Capture One and do an inverse, etc., but that results in a pretty lame file, with all the colors and tones out of whack. What we need is a dedicated control, plugin, preset, etc. for Capture One.
The film photography market is small, to be sure, but a growing segment (consider at the plethora of "film-look" presets.) Any thoughts on a Capture One solution?
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Firstly the Inverse is likely the route to go but almost certainly some other tweaks will be required and I rather suspect that the changes need to start from a Linear film curve setting.
Have you looked at the results of the 2 built in Presets for inversion? If for no other reason, then at least to see which tools and adjustments seem to be proposed as useful.
Also, do you have a digitised negative that you would be willing to make available through a sharing sight so that anyone interested - like me for example - could adjust with a view to seeing how close we might be able to get to what you would like to see. I assume what you would like to see would be based on what you have obtained from other applications.
I have some scans I made as negatives (rather than converting during scanning) some years ago but I don't recall any that were colour images scanned. Most were B&W. Also they are not on disks that are currently connected.
However I do have some plans to investigate some old negatives scanned into a camera rather than a scanner and that would mean using edit software rather than scanning software to apply the inversion. Hence my interest.
Grant0 -
Grant,
Have not tried the inversion presets, but, in the past, getting anything decent requires a lot of tweaking, and understanding the reversal of many of the controls after inversion.
I will put up a "raw negative" and send the link. By that I mean, for example, a Portra 160 negative that has been scanned, via Epson v800 and VueScan, with no corrections of any kind.
Thanks...0 -
NN164022UL1 wrote:
Grant,
Have not tried the inversion presets, but, in the past, getting anything decent requires a lot of tweaking, and understanding the reversal of many of the controls after inversion.
I will put up a "raw negative" and send the link. By that I mean, for example, a Portra 160 negative that has been scanned, via Epson v800 and VueScan, with no corrections of any kind.
Thanks...
Excellent.
I look forward to working with your scan.
I have an older Epson Scanner but have not used it much for some time having moved away from shooting any film.
I'm tempted to get an adaptor and shoot the negatives using a camera but I'm not sure when I would get around to that. I'm thinking sooner if your file proves interesting and simple to work with. If not I may not be in much of a hurry.
As I recall there was a similar question 2 or 3 years ago but it ended up mainly about scanned positives.
Grant0 -
I'm interested, too.
I've recently upgraded my digital camera equipment. Added an old, used 500-series Hasselblad with film backs, two simple lenses and a small darkroom for b/w. It's my 1st analog and I fell in love with this way of photographing and the darkroom prints.
I've done some of my b/w negatives in CO. Ilford FP4 and HP5 films. The film base is gray, the workflow quite straight forward, and the results excellent.
For color negatives, I'd like to have a hybrid workflow. Color negative into CO, digital to print.
I'm still not sure about the best way to get the negative into CO. DSLR or scanner? First impressions point to DSLR. Shared experience welcome!
When trying a color negative my father shot long ago it became tricky. Kelvin to the min at 800, tint to -40. But a bit more Kelvin range on this end would be nice. Levels and gamma for each color channel needed manual tweaking. Setting the channel mode for the 'Levels' tool to 'Red, Green and Blue Channel' to auto-adjust the levels per channel gives a good starting point and the tuning was done mostly by just moving the gamma point for each color channel.
At the end I got a nice image, and I've got a workflow to start with.
There was another thread about negatives:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=24372
I've been playing with that example yesterday. And I already like my 1st result. Tools used: Exposure, High Dynamic Range, Levels, Sharpening. No need for Noise Reduction or Color Balance. (I inverted with an adjustment layer, turning the RGB curve around. Just because I don't like the levels-crossing.)
Regards,
Hans0 -
OK - at the bottom is a link.. This is a big file. It was shot, as I recall, with a Nikon FM3a and a Zeiss 2/35 zf.2. Portra 160.
After much experimentation, my current workflow is to scan with either the Epson v800 or the PrimeFilm XA (the latter takes uncut rolls and eliminates the holder problem (35mm only). Then I convert to a positive in Photoshop with ColorPerfect. Some 3rd party noise (grain) reduction is sometimes necessary, and always sharpening (I use PhotoKit.)
The problem with this is ColorPerfect is less than intuitive and not very flexible. And its the only game in town. The inversion process takes forever, throws the controls off, and is too reliant on user interpretation, or, in my case, poor color comprehension.
Scanning with a camera supposedly yields better results, but you still have to convert the negative. Also, it is slow, user intensive, and somehow feels wrong - to me.
Of course one could simply shoot with slide film, but. for me, that means sending film to labs in distant lands.
Here is the link: yikes! it is going to take two hours to upload this file! (199.21mb) I will try to find another solution and get back to you guys...0 -
OK, lets try this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgkaqaswg3itu ... 5.tif?dl=00 -
Nice place. 😊
Quick check: am I heading in the right direction?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iaefh35rtn01i ... 6.png?dl=0
(Temporary link. I'll keep it there for a while.)
Regards,
Hans0 -
Looks very good to me! But how does the "reversal" of the colors, etc after inverting impact the ability to do further processing? 0 -
NN164022UL1 wrote:
Looks very good to me!
...
Good scan. I skipped the white balancing because of the matching histograms.
Just these steps:
+ Curves: flipped the rgb curve around to invert,
+ Levels: fitted each channel to it's histogram,
+ Levels: adjusted the gamma point for each channel,
+ High Dynamic Range: a bit of highlight recovery using the Shadows slider.
There are some options to make it more accurate.NN164022UL1 wrote:
...
But how does the "reversal" of the colors, etc after inverting impact the ability to do further processing?
Most tools do what they should, like Contrast or Sharpening.
Some the other way around. Darker means brighter, shadows recover highlights.
Interesting is the implementation of the Color Editor. If you ever shifted hue with it a long way, you know what I mean. The sample shows the underlying original color, but it shifts the visible one. And now there is an inversion between the two. You have to move the color selection 180 degrees to apply changes to the color range you actually selected.
Surprise. The colors in tools like Color Balance and the Black & White filters are not inverted.
Remember that negative saturation ends in a toning, not b/w, when working with separated channels.
It definitely needs some practice.
Regards,
Hans0 -
The included Styles did not work to well with this one. No surprise, they are only starting points.
It seems the tif has an embedded sRGB colour space that may limit some subtlety of processing.
As the base characteristics curve is going to be Linear I started from there - noting Hans's observations about inversion of action for some tools.
I ended up with what looks like much the same result using the same tools although probably using different adjustment values.
There's certainly a lot one could play with there and very different results available to suit different tastes.
I think I'll have to dig out those old negatives I mentioned to see what can be done with them.
Thanks for making the file available.
Grant0 -
I think it would be good if you include part of the unexposed negative (e.g., sprockets area) in the scan. This has the base color of the negative and can serve as a reference point to get rid of the color cast of the negative (I believe that a common technique in photoshop was to add a difference layer of the base color).
However, your converted example looks quite nice!
Cheers,
Peter.0 -
Thanks for all of the input, folks, but, at least for me, this does not work out. Too much fiddling' and guesswork, and too long to do it. At least with ColorPerfect it is one click for a starting point. And the files are always better.
Based upon the time/effort here, it is more practical (if not philosophically consoling) to simply open the neg in PS (through Bridge) apply ColorPerfect, and go to CaptureOne. Of course once in PS you can always remain in PS, but that is, after all, the point of this correspondence..0 -
About a year ago I got the job to make prints for a photographer artist. This one should have been prone to problems. The original was a slide and all I was given was an old colour 4x5 internegative and a small proof print. I set up the D800 on a copy stand and shot directly into C1 ver 9.?
Although it took some trial and error getting a good starting exposure, the amount of control is outstanding. Prints were fabulous.
Yes the controls were backwards and that did indeed slow me down but the results were worth it.0
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