[filmscanners] Negative scanning : negpos plug-in – part 1

["simpy" <simpy@xs4all.nl>]

Hello all,

I’ve trying for a while now to find a reproducible way to get decent
scans from negatives without a lot of effort. It wasn’t working. The
Minolta software that came with my scanner produces a mess, same for
Vuescan, although it has more controls – which gets you closer at the
expense of a LOT of time. Silverfast comes close, but it’s way
overpriced and gives no information whatsoever about what is happening
under the hood. My last resort was to scan a linear file and try to
invert it in Photoshop, which always led to colour casts in some part of
the tonal scale.

But then I stumbled upon this web page :
http://www.c-f-systems.com/PhotoMathDocs.html . On it, the author not
only explains quite clearly why a straightforward inversion in Photoshop
doesn’t produce the expected result, but he also explains how it *can*
be done properly. And even better, he has also written a Photoshop
plug-in, negpos, to do it (trial download on the same page)!

I’ve tested the beta of negpos in early december but I haven’t gotten
around to actually using it (version 1.0 now) a lot, until now. All I
can say is wow! I’m now getting decent colour out of my negatives with
minimal effort. The interface is still a bit quirky and you have to
understand conversion process to get the most out of the setting, but to
me that’s definitely worth it!

If you’re looking for a way to scan negatives without a lot of hassle,
you owe it to yourself to check out the negpos plug-in. I’ll send a
follow-up message as well with my scanning workflow, for those interested.

Regards,
Simon

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