Pyro negatives and scanning

[Michael Wellman]

Looking to get into scanning my LF negatives. I've been a long time pyro user. Are there any problems scanning pyro negatives? Anything special you need to do or is it just like your standard B&W processing? thanks

[Peter Gomena]

I don't handle them any differently. Density is density. If you scan in RGB and then convert to monochrome in Photoshop's channel mixer, you might see a slightly different spectral response, but there's no significant difference. With Pyrocat HD, the major density effect is to UV light useful to alternative processes, not so much the visible spectrum as far as scanning is concerned. In fact, after scanning nothing but Pyrocat-HD negatives for several years, I recently had a lab process some negatives. They use X-tol 1:1, and they nailed the processing time. The negatives scanned beautifully, and I handled them in exactly the same way I handle my Pyrocat negatives.

[Richard Wasserman]

I don't handle them any differently. Density is density. If you scan in RGB and then convert to monochrome in Photoshop's channel mixer, you might see a slightly different spectral response, but there's no significant difference. With Pyrocat HD, the major density effect is to UV light useful to alternative processes, not so much the visible spectrum as far as scanning is concerned. In fact, after scanning nothing but Pyrocat-HD negatives for several years, I recently had a lab process some negatives. They use X-tol 1:1, and they nailed the processing time. The negatives scanned beautifully, and I handled them in exactly the same way I handle my Pyrocat negatives.

Same here

[Sandro]

you need to scan in RGB mode, so you can tune the conversion to b&w with channel mixer.
If you scan in b&w mode it is possible that your scanner convert the yellowish into pure white and the Puro effect is cancelled.
You can fine-tune every picture but it seems to me this is a waste of time. After several testing I decided to stick with one single receipt for all the images (and I develop a Photoshop Action for that.
I do this for both scanner I use, Hasselblad and Nikon.