Correcting Orange Mask Manually in Photoshop

[thomashobbs]

Hello,

I have been digitizing my 8x10 negatives by taping them on a white piece of plexiglass that I have taped to my living room window and then photographing the negative with my digital SLR. The quality isn't great but it's good enough for web-sized versions I can send around to friends.

This process works fine for black & white but I'm having trouble correcting for the orange mask for my color negatives. I don't have any scanning software, just Photoshop. The orange becomes blue when I invert and I try to dial it down but it keeps looking weird. Here's an example of my first attempt at doing this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashobbs/3955521431/

Are there any downloadable actions or Lightroom presets or free plug-ins that can automatically correct for this? Any suggestions for how I could better tweak this manually in Photoshop [it's not my strong suit].

Thanks!
Thomas

[Peter De Smidt]

You could try taking a picture of a MacBeth color checker. Do what you normally do, bring into Photoshop, invert. Then bring up the curves dialogue. Use the black eyedropper on the black square, the gray eyedropper on the middle square, and the white dropper on the white square. Note, that it's best to completely shade the black square when you're taking the test picture. I made a little baffle out of poster board and black velvet that I put right around the square when I photograph the chart. If you don't do this, you might clip shadow detail in the scene.

[percepts]

Hello,

I have been digitizing my 8x10 negatives by taping them on a white piece of plexiglass that I have taped to my living room window and then photographing the negative with my digital SLR. The quality isn't great but it's good enough for web-sized versions I can send around to friends.

This process works fine for black & white but I'm having trouble correcting for the orange mask for my color negatives. I don't have any scanning software, just Photoshop. The orange becomes blue when I invert and I try to dial it down but it keeps looking weird. Here's an example of my first attempt at doing this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashobbs/3955521431/

Are there any downloadable actions or Lightroom presets or free plug-ins that can automatically correct for this? Any suggestions for how I could better tweak this manually in Photoshop [it's not my strong suit].

Thanks!
Thomas

the simplest is to apply the photo filter from image/adjustments/photo filter/ and apply a warming filter with tweak to get it how you want it.

[Mike1234]

Include a gray scale in the pic then use auto correct via clicking the darkest (black) patch with "shadow" selected, then the lightest (white) patch with "highlight" selected, then the middle (middle gray) patch with "midtones" selected. Tweak after that. Make sure your sample tool is set to a radius of 5 px to get a better average (grain affects this).

[percepts]

There is another simple way which gives better results and that is to use the hue/saturation image adjustments tool.

Open the tool and the select blues and not master. Then adjust the saturation slider to remove the amount of blue. Also try this with cyan as often the shadows are full of cyan rather than blue.

[Ben Syverson]

Your "scan" actually looks great, IMO. You're 90% of the way there.

The reason the bottom of the image has a blue tint—but the top doesn't—is that you photographed this on a fluorescent light table at 1/160, which is a no-no. Is Argentina 60hz or 50hz? If it's 60hz, you want to shoot at 1/30th; if it's 50hz, you want to shoot at 1/25th. That should take care of any mid-picture color shifts.

Then just do whatever you did to process that image!

[percepts]

This shows the effect using the photoshop hue/saturation tool. I desaturated blue and most of the magenta too.

31588

[thomashobbs]

Ben thanks for the suggestion but actually my "light table" is my living room window and a piece of plexiglass :)

Here's a picture of the set-up:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashobbs/3838369336/in/set-72157622088061682/

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'll try them out and post the result.

[Ben Syverson]

Oh, okay "improvised light table" threw me off.

If it's just an issue of removing the mask, you can probably do the whole thing in Levels. That's basically what I do in the scanning software.

[Joanna Carter]

One way of geing rid of the mask is to add a curve layer and use the black pipette tool on the curve layer to select an area of the margin which has no image as the black, then select something in the image that you know to be pure white with the white pipette; finally, if you have something in the image that you know to be neutral gray, use the gray pipette to select that.

It's not guaranteed to be perfect for the gray pipette but the black and white pipettes should give you a fair crack at manually adjusting the mid-range to match.

[bsimison]

I do this in Levels, editing each color channel individually. Basically, you want the blacks, highlights, and midtones sliders to occur in approximately the same spot on the histograms for Red, Green, and Blue. There's also a plug-in named "ColorNeg" which does a fine job.

[thomashobbs]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Adding a Curves adjustment layer proved to be very helpful, placing the black pipette on the negative border and the white pipette on something white. Fortunately I photographed all the negatives in their sleeves on which I'd written their number with a black sharpie [so there's my inverted white]. Finding the neutral gray is the challenge. Somebody should sell 18% gray t-shirts or accessories :)

Here's a couple where I think the results turned about better, altho the color still seems a little funky:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashobbs/3959946655/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashobbs/3960717252/

I've downloaded the ColorNeg plug-in. I will try it and see if I can improve my results even more.

cheers!
Thomas

[domaz]

VueScan can scan from files and could remove the Negative Mask as well.

[mcfactor]

They do. B&H sells small 18% gray mircrofiber clothes.

[Mike1234]

The first image has slightly more blue in the "upper shadow" detail and the second one has slightly more cyan-green.

For the first one start by adding a control point to the middle and another half way between the middle and highest point and one more between the middle and lowest point. Then use that last control point (call this "upper shadow") you just made to decrease the blues in the shadows. You'll probably have to add the same control points to the RGB curve and raise shadow brightness just a hair. You may need to tweak positions of the three center control points because they all affect each other.

Add the same control points to the second image except on the green and red curves. Decrease the "upper shadow" brightness in the geen curve a bit and raise it in the red curve but only just a hair.

Tweak to your heart's content.

[bagdad child]

Here's a tutorial:

http://www.neilsnape.com/color/scan_neg_film/index.html

Its for linoscan but the idea is the same. Scroll to page 4 to see how to do this in photoshop. I am scanning on a Cezanne and if the neg gives me trouble, normally by clipping shadow detail I scan as a positive and invert in photoshop. Then I apply auto levels (or manual levels) which improves things a lot. After that open curves and correct the colors separately to remove the cyan cast.