Showing posts with label scanning negatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scanning negatives. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Do I scan the negative or do I scan its print?


At Carterworks we scan and digitize thousands of colour photographic prints, slides and negatives.

When it comes to digitizing colour photos from certain eras it is better, if possible, to scan the negative. Why is this?  If you scan a colour print and compare it to a scan of the negative used to make that print you will notice differences between the scans.  This difference is particularly obvious in prints and negatives produced circa 1980s - 1990s.  These differences are not due to scanner settings or the type of scanner.  We know this as our systems are colour controlled.  To illustrate this point we scanned negatives and their corresponding prints from our own collection.

What we found:

1. Scans taken from original negatives have a greater colour range than the scans of their corresponding colour prints. Some of this difference can be explained by the limitations of print technology and inks at the time of printing; the remainder can be attributed to environmental exposure and the unstable nature of colour photography.  Another reason is the addition of black in the shadows at the time the print was made. Black was added to  made the print images look sharper but this  means information and colour is lost in the shadows.  The negative does not have this loss of detail.


Scan from original 1990s negative

Scan from original 1990s print.  Use of black
in the shadows reduces photo information.
The photo scan has a pink colour cast

























2. Prints often have a distinctive colour cast.  This is caused by a mechanism employed by the chemical photo labs in the past to "improve a photo" which was to add a wash of whatever the dominant colour was in the image being developed.

We first discovered these differences when we scanned in a series of photos we took in the early 90s of  Art Deco buildings in Napier, NZ.  At the time the images were shot many of these buildings were predominantly painted with a soft pastel neutral background of white or cream and colour was used to pick out the building decoration. We noticed that a lot of our prints of these buildings had a colour cast which was in the same colour range as the buildings trim.  However this colour cast could not be seen in a scan of the corresponding original negative. These colour casts are obvious when compared to the original scan of the corresponding negatives, see examples above and below..


Scan from original 1990s print note the blue green colour cast

Scan from 1990s original negative

      
Scan from original 1990s negative
Scan from original 1990s print note the blue colour cast




What if you only have photos? 

This is not a problem.   We will produce a high resolution scan of your photos, remove the dust and scratches, correct any colour casts and any photographic print texture using Photoshop and other specialized editing tools as we have done in the restored example below....

Original photo no negative available with
red colour cast.
Final image corrected in Photoshop



Copyright Carterworks

Friday, February 20, 2015

Why not all scanned images are created equal


Recently I was reading the magazine section of a newspaper and was surprised by the poor quality of some of the images in an article I was reading.  The images were blurred in parts and had lost resolution and information, I suspect due to the fact that they were never scanned properly in the first place, that is, the resolution they were scanned at was not sufficient for publication.

A lot of people think that scanning an image just involves putting it in a scanner and pushing a button - easy-peasy - so why pay someone?

The answer is its not just a matter of having good scanning equipment - its knowing how to get the best out of your equipment, the right settings and the right resolution for the purpose.

Before I scan I analyse the image to gauge things like its detail and also damage.

I ask:

  • What do you want to use your images for?
  • Do you think you might want to print them in the future?

I also consider:
  • What is the best digital format. If they are colour images for example, I want to try and capture as much of the colour as possible
  • If they are damaged.  I want to give people the option of being able to fix them, if not now  - maybe in the future.
Scanning is also about knowing the best format to save your digital images for the future.  So if you have a collection of slides, negatives or photos call me because I can help you with your scanning needs.