Oh, so that’s what they mean
Nature’s histogram?
A couple of weeks a ago I bought a copy of ColorNeg. Colin has written extensively about using ColorNeg with VueScan’s raw scans, so I thought I’d give it a shot. The trial version of the plugin is pretty much worthless as it obscures the results with a heavy grid of noise, but I plumped down my sixty bucks anyway. I was quickly disappointed. Although ColorNeg worked wonders with some scans, with others it turned out flat, muddy junk. ColorNeg’s manual suggest that non-linear scans are to blame for poor results. I’d been scanning in 16 bit linear mode on my Scan Dual IV, but I thought it was possible that the scans weren’t truly linear. That ‘linear’ scans using the negative and positive settings didn’t look exactly the same lent some credence to this hypothesis. In hopes of getting truly linear scans, I plunked down another $80 for VueScan Pro. Ah, now that works.
Has Kate seen the light too?
Call me a convert. After years of dismissing VueScan as irrelevant at best, I’ve discovered what many already knew; VueScan’s raw scanning feature is the bomb for B&W. If you let VueScan do the inversions, it’s no better than any other scanner software, but the raw scans are something else entirely. The raw Tiffs are all bunched up in the highlights, but they expand nicely, much more so than simple positive scans. I suspect that this means I will no longer have to result to underdevelopment to protect the highlights in my negs, which should help shadow detail, something that suffered with my previous technique. A little extra PS work is required, and there is room for error here, but in the end, the raw scans make scanning much more predictable. In some ways, it’s more like working in a darkroom; I can tell by looking at the negative how I should work it in PS, something which wasn’t always possible before.
After a night of celebrating the glories of VueScan
I should note at this point that I still haven’t had much luck with ColorNeg. It does work, but not significantly better than doing the inversions and adjustments on my own. It does seem to work better with TriX and HP5 than with Delta 400, which makes me suspect that its gamma is geared towards working with films with a more traditional curve than the straight line T grain films. I haven’t played around with it enough to be sure.
Filed under Doh!
Hey, Matt, that link’s broken!
I’m not sure that it is the gamma that is the issue with ColorNeg, but I agree with you that ColorNeg isn’t “significantly better than doing the inversions and adjustments on my own”. What it is is much faster. My ColorNeg routine now has no adjustability in it - I just click and go, knowing that’ll get me roughly where I want to be. The image is “made” in Lightzone. Using HP5+ for the avoidance of doubt.
I’m glad that you found the VueScan Pro experiment worthwhile. Like you seem to have found, suddenly a lot of problems just disappear with proper 16 bit linear raw.
While we sing the praises of Vuescan, I will add that the version I bought has free upgrades for life. It’s a great scanner driver; now I just need a suitable scanner for it to drive.
Fixed the link.
Perhaps with more experience I’ll get to click and go with ColorNeg, but at the moment I’m finding making the adjustments in PS more interesting and reliable.
One complaint about Vuescan; it’s stability, at least on windows, leaves something to be desired. Crashes are frequent, and it doesn’t work at all if my iTunes is running.
Matt - I have to admit to being a bit of a primative when it comes to digital scanning. I have a good Nikon scanner, and I use the software that came with it, and an old version of PS elements - the one with training wheels.
Would this Vuescan work on the raw tiffs? Or is it a plug-in for PS? Sorry to be so obtuse, but the two latter photos seem to show much improved tonality. The curse of my scans seems to be getting the broad distribution of tones I like - and used to get in wet darkrooms - without the whole print looking far too flat. I take it that Vuescan helps that effort.
Max
My experience using ColorNeg with Silverfast AI scans is that it’s not any better with black and white (also using HP5+) but fab with colour.
Not sure how Vuescan raw compares to a linear Silverfast scan to 16-bit TIFF (they don’t have anything called RAW).
I blame Colin for my ColorNeg purchase, too.
Max,
When set to raw mode, vuescan produces tiffs that you should be able to edit in PS elements. Vuescan just replaces the Nikon software you use to do the scanning. The editing can be done in almost any photo editor, although last time I checked, Elements didn’t have curves, so that might make it a bit more difficult.
A broad distribution of tones seems much easier to accomplish with Vuescan.
Matt
‘I blame Colin for my ColorNeg purchase, too.’
Heh, I wasn’t going to go so far as actually blaming Colin ;-)
I have not experienced stability problems with Vuescan. I use Windows 2000 though. What is ColorNeg?
OK, I found out about ColorNeg. A plug-in!Well, I don’t use PS. I used the cheaper Picture Window software. It works for me.
Well you should all blame Doug Plummer really as that is whom I got ColorNeg from.
As for VueScan stability - it has been fine on OSX 10.4.x. It doesn’t behave like a native app, so I’ve always assumed that it was a slightly clumsy Windows import. So, a bit clunky, but absolutely stable.
Now if it was a plugin for Aperture 2, I would be all over it!
Hello Matt,
i visit your site for quite some time (think i found it looking for hexar rf or so ;-)
however, i like your way of seeing and check back regularely.
i always wondered when people talk about scanning. it always seemded to me that they never scan raw and are at the mercy of the sw’s conversion (i.e. levels and non-functioning crap). now, it seems that other scanning sw cannot save raw-data. i didn’t know, since i used vuescan exclusively from the first neg on.
as you mentioned, using vuescan in raw-mode is like developing in the darkroom. you can even change exposure, by clicking lock exposure and adjusting the value - in case the automatic exposure doesn’t work, which is the case with dense negatives.
looking forward to hear from your experience…
best always
Andreas
Hi Matt,
I’m on the quest for great scans with vuescan and either lightroom or photoshop. I’ve spent the past few days trying to get vuescan to gives me a tiff that edits well in LR or PS but to no avail. I hadn’t really tried raw yet but I will as soon as I get home.
What kind of adjustments do you do in PS with the raw file? Your photos look stellar on screen. Do you invert, then adjust levels then curves? What is your workflow like in PS?
kes
I invert, then I usually do one set of curves to get the highlights close to where I want them and then another set of curves for the shadows. The resulting file gets saved, and then I resize for either print or web. After I resize, I’ll sometimes use USM to adjust local contrast.
I have often sat in a local coffee shop looking out along a mountain top at the pattern along the tops of the trees. It looks similar to this though I thought about it more as a wave form from a sound file. I often thought if I could photograph it and somehow turn that edge into its own waveform and play some secret message. So goes coffee shop thinking…
Looking at that picture sure reminds me of the beginning of the Marginal Way in Ogunquit Maine where Kim and I would walk back to our hotel.
Steve Williams
Scooter in the Sticks
’somehow turn that edge into its own waveform and play some secret message’
A talented programmer could probably hook you up with something that could do just that. It’s an interesting idea.