Adaptive or Wrong techniques

[_Revere_]

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.

[Leah]

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!

[_Revere_]

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

[roger_ele]

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 - 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

[_Revere_]

Thanks I'll give that a try.