How to make a negative in photoshop. How to turn a negative into a positive: special techniques for working with emotions A program for converting negatives into positives

Turning film photo archives into digital ones or digitizing individual negatives / positives is better with the help of special film scanners. But if there are not so many pictures worth such a procedure and the goal is not to create exhibitions, but only to return to life (on a computer or TV screen) memorable photographs, then you can scan with a digital camera. Design

The digitization system described in the article was made from a camera Canon PowerShot G9, adapter for attaching attachments and light filters, light filter mounting systems and homemade "slide module". Kits like cokin, are also available for cameras for which it is not possible to install attachments on the lens (they are attached to a tripod socket), which allows even such cameras to be turned into a film scanner.

Since the system "camera-scanner" is compact, it is convenient for "field" work. I wanted to "package" it so that a slide film from old films could be made using a lightweight laptop or netbook. That is, shoot in JPEG and almost do not process.

The photo at the beginning of the article shows a "camera - scanner". The idea is simple - a device for macro photography of film. Tasks that need to be solved in order for the result to be good:
to ensure accurate and rigid mounting of the film in the focusing plane perpendicular to the optical axis of the lens;
illuminate the film evenly;
process digital images, convert negatives into positives.

There is not much to do with your own hands: a film holder and a rigid frame in which this holder will “slide” (“slide module”). The frame is installed in the filter holder cokin. Parts can also be made from thick black cardboard, but it will not provide the necessary rigidity. Therefore, black plastic was used.

Film holder (material - plastic from a binder folder).

The film holder is installed in the frame. The frame is made of two almost identical parts (plates with a frame window, the material is plastic ~ 1 mm thick), glued together so that the film holder (together with the film) can move inside this frame. To do this, thin strips of plastic are laid between the plates at the gluing points (2-3 strips of the same material from which the film holder is made).

The dimensions of the film holder and frame are chosen so that the film holder can move in two perpendicular directions in the plane of focus. This allows, if necessary, to place different areas of the film in the center of the frame, which can be useful when setting the white balance and exposure based on the enlarged area of ​​the image on the film.

If you need to digitize not a film in a segment, but in a frame, then you can fix it with the help of a rubber band:

"Scanner" in disassembled form.

"Scanner" assembly.

Backlight

There are many ways to illuminate film for reshooting. If there is a viewing table - with its help. You can attach the milky plastic to the window or install it between the lamp and the camera. Another alternative is to use a flash on a white wall - the reflected light will illuminate the film. If the camera flash is too close to the lens, such as Canon G9, you can shoot with an external flash.

Camera settings

In the photo at the beginning of the article, the "slide scanner" is not installed correctly - directly on the viewing table. When reshooting, the distance between the surface of the light source and the film must be large enough so that matting and surface defects of the light source are not visible in the photograph. The aperture should be chosen so that the depth of field is sufficient for uneven film, but not so small that the details of the surface of the light source are visible in the picture.

As a rule, with compact cameras, the greatest zoom is possible at the minimum focal length. In this case, the image may be distorted. It is better to zoom out and shoot at longer focal lengths. In this case, you will have to increase the distance between the camera and the film to the point at which focusing is possible. In my design, I used to lengthen the design of the frame from light filters.

Focusing - automatic, macro mode. If the camera has a stabilizer, it must be turned off (it works relative to a stationary subject, and if this object is attached to the lens, the stabilizer will perform the opposite action - “shake” the camera).

Exposure - automatic, matrix metering. By the histogram or snapshot, you can judge the error and make corrections. If the dynamic range of the camera is not enough for the film, you can shoot in the exposure bracketing mode and "fold" the final image from several files.

White balance - automatic. What difference does it make to a camera to shoot a real object or its image on film, even negative? If autobalance works well for real scenes, then it will cope with the film. An error in setting the white balance can lead to a loss of detail in one of the color channels, as can be seen in the following illustration (red channel, upper fragment). This is not critical when shooting in RAW, but for JPEG it will be impossible to “restore” highlights or shadows.

Histograms for RGB channels of color negative images obtained at different white balance settings in the camera. The top shot is manual white balance, based on the light source. Medium - auto white balance. Lower - manual white balance according to the enlarged fragment of the film on which the gray card was taken (focusing is not necessary when setting the white balance manually, so you can enlarge the fragment).

Permission

Fragment 1:1, black and white negative.

The resolution of the "scanner" is determined by the resolution of the camera and the accuracy of focusing. The typical resolution for a digital camera is ~0.7 lines per pixel. For a camera with a 12 megapixel sensor and a long side of 4000 pixels, we get a resolution of 2800 lines per long side of the frame. The long side of the frame for 35 mm film is approximately 1.5 inches and the resolution of the "scanner" will be ~1800 lines/inch. With Canon G9 you can practically get ~1700 lines per inch. Since the macro mode of this camera is not very effective, the field of the film frame in the picture takes up approximately 3/4 (on the long side) and the practical resolution is less than ~ 1300 lines / inch. This is enough for slideshows and prints up to about 13x18 cm.Processing

Ideal if the camera can apply inversion (negative-positive) and cropping to the image. By guessing or correctly setting the white balance, you can get the finished photo after inversion. Unfortunately, at Canon G9 there is no "negative" function.

The result of applying the inversion curve when reshooting the negative. On the left when applying the "simple" curve. On the right - processing of a "complex" curve with different gamma values ​​for RGB channels.

Fragment 1:1. Noticeable dead pixels.

Working with curves in CHDK for the camera Canon G9 has not yet been brought to the level that would allow you to get a good result without a significant investment of time and effort. Moreover, when "applying curves" in Canon PowerShot G9 So far, I have not been able to solve the "dead pixels" problem.

If you have old photographic films lying around on your mezzanine and still haven’t gotten around to converting them to digital, then there is a very simple and most importantly free solution to this problem. That solution is Helmut. Helmut is a film scanning application that allows you to quickly and accurately digitize your old color/black and white negatives and positives.

According to the developers, the initial idea was to create a solution that needed only a smartphone and a simple lightbox. This solution should be intuitive and work in the same way as traditional desktop film scanners such as EpsonScan, VueScan, Silverfast, FlexColor. Helmut allows you to scan, crop and edit a frame using standard tools (brightness/contrast, color levels, color balance, HSL, unsharp mask). Helmut can scan photos in relatively good quality, especially on newer smartphones.

Here is a simple recipe for using Helmut.

Instruction

The next step is to invert the color. Inversion is the change of colors to the opposite, reverse. The key combination Ctrl + I will help to do this, or you can use the menu operation: “Image – Correction – Inversion” (Image – Adjustments – Invert). You will see that the color of the original image is .

Many stop at the second step, but this is wrong, since the negative is not completely created. After inverting, be sure to desaturate your image. You can do this both from the keyboard - Shift + Ctrl + U, and through the menu: “Image – Correction – Desaturate” (Image – Adjustments – Desaturate). As you can see, the image is completely black and white.

The next step is to correct the photo. The menu item “Image – Correction – Hue and Saturation” (Image – Adjustments – Hue / Saturation) will come to the rescue. Here, be sure to check the box next to the “Toning” (Colorize) option. Next, use the cursor to change the values ​​​​of the fields from top to bottom: hue (hue) - 209, saturation (saturation) - 15, brightness (lightness) remains the same, zero. Click OK.

The next step is to work on the ratio of light and shadow: “Image – Correction – Light / Shadows (Image – Adjustments – Shadows / Highlights). A new image correction window will open. If it's small, click Show More Options at the bottom. Change the tone and light values ​​to make the image more saturated and high quality. In the item "Shadows" - Shadows, set the following values: amount - 0, width of the tonal range - 50, radius - 30 pixels. In the "Lights" menu: effect - 35, width of the tonal range of light - 75, radius - 30. The values ​​​​of color correction and contrast of midtones should be minus: color correction should be set at a level of -8, contrast of midtones -10.

DERSP 02.06.2008 - 12:20

Good day or night. Question for software experts. Please tell me if there are any PC programs available that could be used to treat photos from the available scanned negatives, and if so, please give a link.
Best regards, Sergei.

spp 02.06.2008 - 01:30

Photoshop will help you.

Borion 02.06.2008 - 03:29

Negative turns into positive with one click 😊 Even simple graphic editors have this option. I don't use Photoshop, but I use the free version of the PhotoFiltre program (that's right, not Filter 😊) and there it is done through the "Palette"->"Negative" menu.

Serg_62 06/02/2008 - 23:43

spp
Photoshop will help you.

Borion
Negative turns into positive with one click

For monochrome negatives - no doubt, but if the negative is color ...
I was able to wrap color negatives only immediately when scanning with the scanner software.
And if I scanned the negative "one to one", like a slide, then I couldn't wrap it later. After all, the concept of "negative" in editors means "additional color", but on a real film everything is far from being the case. Or am I wrong and just doing it wrong?

Borion 03.06.2008 - 12:09

Mmm, hard to answer. In fact, I came across color photos converted into negatives, I just returned them to their original form. I didn't have to scan film negatives.

CB-R 03.06.2008 - 11:08

I tried (for a long time) to get something from b / w negatives - it didn’t work out.

------------------
Sincerely.

Serg_62 06/03/2008 - 19:56

The algorithm for working in Photoshop can be something like this:
First we turn the negative into a positive (Image - settings - invert, or Ctrl-I), the colors will be distorted.
Now call the Levels tool (Image - settings - levels, or Ctrl-L)
We look that simultaneous processing of all 3 channels (RGB) is enabled
Take a black eyedropper and point to the part of the image that should be black. This may be the interval between frames, unless, of course, they scanned "with a margin".
We take a white pipette, point to the area that should be white.
Here, there should already be an acceptable result, if, of course, the sections are chosen correctly. With a large grain size, you can "not hit" the white point. You can also adjust the semitones, and each channel separately.

ag111 03.06.2008 - 20:11

Color negative film has a special orange layer, either anti-halation, or to improve color reproduction, I don’t remember well.

What simple programs do is they don't take this layer into account.

BW negatives, color slides scanned. On a good scanner it turns out very well.

DERSP 06.06.2008 - 15:33

Thanks guys. I understand that there is no special program designed specifically for color film conversion. Such a program in which one could stupidly print pictures from negatives. It's a pity, I'm sure that there are more than one thousand amateur photographers who have dozens of old negatives, photos from which are either lost or were not printed at one time for financial reasons. Still, I think that the topic needs to be continued, maybe some advanced user on the subject of "photo" will stumble upon it, and give a hint for solving this problem, which I think is necessary for many people.
Sincerely, DESP.

ag111 06.06.2008 - 15:42

Plugin for Photoshop IMHO should be. You also need to look at native programs for scanners that work with negatives. Scanners are cheap now.

Serg_62 06.06.2008 - 21:00

ag111
You also need to look at native programs for scanners that work with negatives.

As I said, scanners wrap negatives well, but as far as I know, only during the scanning process. There, firstly, RAW is processed, which has a bit margin, and secondly, a "hole" in the negative holder is additionally scanned, i.e. "clean" lamp, and the gaps between frames or the area near the perforation. Analogues of black and white dots.
Based on these data, a preset for processing is selected if the film is from a well-known manufacturer, or the data is applied directly if the preset could not be selected (in this case, the result is worse).
So if the task is to translate the really existing negatives into a positive, then this is quite possible (but it is better with a special slide scanner, the dynamic range of a universal household one is small).
But if the negatives have already been scanned one-to-one, then IMHO only with pens in the editor.

Big John 09.06.2008 - 21:57

So far found:
- The Retouch Pilot program is designed to remove some imperfections, such as scratches, small spots, hairs and other small defects that exist in the photo or appeared during scanning. And also the program will allow you to restore old photos. You'll be able to remove long-term storage defects such as emulsion cracks and fixer spots, and even repair torn corners on a digitized image. With Retouch Pilot, your old photos will take on a new life!

Video Pilot is designed for color correction of video materials. Thanks to the unique technology - color correction by reference color, color management becomes easy and natural. Entrust your videos to Video Pilot and they will sparkle with new colors!

LIKE THIS, sorry with the English sucks 😛)
- Silver Pilot is designed for converting photograph negatives into positives within two steps: you just select a clear area in the margin of the film or clear film base and press the Start button. This technology allows you to get high-quality positives even if you are a novice in photography, for any film model. The software is easily mastered, and includes built-in examples.
The last link to the Silver Pilot rapidshare for 2006 does not work, but the search direction is defined.
I kind of dabbled in it out of boredom, there was a video tutorial, just about converting negative-positive, and the picture was in color (like the head of a Chinese dragon made of wood, I don’t remember anymore, I’ll look in the file cleaner, maybe I’ll find that program, although I’m not sure ... .

Big John 09.06.2008 - 22:12

Additive ... there are 54 programs of all sorts of small ones ... "Programs from Two Pilots!"
http://www.2baksa.net/news/12204/

I didn’t download it, but the link to the download exists, check for viruses, I don’t know the site, there may be surprises, although Symantec Antivirus 10 reacts to keygens, as it reacts to trojans, when working with the archive, the keygen can be immediately deleted without placing it in isolation .. .

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