I was selected for a project to scan over 1500 negatives at a Library with scanning procedures already in place. Currently I'm at the 1000 mark and overtime have changed the procedure in which the scanning was done in order to produce a better picture.

Now I want to ask myself and the community, which I've often searched for advice, are these techniques I've adapted wrong or is there a better way.

I'm currently using Photoshop 5.5 and ScanMaker III with ScanWizard 32bit.

One procedure was with ScanWizard. I switched to "Positive Transparency" instead of "Negative Film" for capturing negatives, and then invert the image in Photoshop.

With this change, I found scanning is much quicker in acquiring the image, computer is less strained, certain negative media types come into Photoshop ten-fold in quality while others don’t change and working with “Levels” is much easier to do.

The second change I made was how I use the "Levels". I use the Marquee tool to select all the non-damage potions and relevant information of the picture, call-up "Auto-Level", save the configuration, “ESC” “Auto-Level” and then apply the Saved “Level” to the whole picture.

Since I am working to preserve history and also working in volume. I can’t crop out the borders and not shouldn’t fix damaged parts of the image. So when I call up the “Levels” I have all this mis-information. Using the technique described above I is able to create beautiful pictures with minimal thought.

So am I crazy or not schooled properly being better techniques out there.


Thanks


Revere.

These are both techniques I've seen recommended various places, so it looks like you're off to a good start reinventing them for yourself!

There have been many times in my life where I've come up with weird ways of solving problems and someone else comes along and shows me a 1-step version of what I've done, so I figured I better ask.

Thanks for the reply :)

Lots of different ways to do things in Photoshop. If they work they are not wrong.

On the levels point I think I would just bring up levels and hold down the alt/opt key while moving the white traingle thingy and the balck triangle thingy - you can see when you are going from damage to image information and that would be one step instead of 2 if I understood your post ... not always gaurenteed :happy: - you can even decide how far not to go in the same step (say a scene where nothing should be darker than dark grey like a white bunny in a snow storm) ;)

Roger

Thanks I'll give that a try. :)