Invert Colour Negatives In Lightroom

Having written my previous article on scanning slides with a digital camera I have decided apply the theory to copying negatives.  Using Adobe Lightroom which is my favourite image processing application, I will show how to obtain perfect negative copies including removal of the negative colour mask.  These steps may be equally applied in photoshop using Adobe Camera Raw or for free using The Gimp and UFRAW

I will explain how to obtain true colour digital images from your negatives

The steps below allow me to obtain perfect colour balance.

1. It is crucial that you shoot in RAW format so that the white balance may be changed after capture – do not worry about the white balance setting at this point
2. Have a white background on your monitor screen such as an empty google page for example
3. Set the film leader in your toilet tube holder, or other suitable negative holder


This is the Negative Film Leader

4. Take a photo of the film leader
5. In Lightroom Invert the film leader by choosing the ‘Develop’ module -> locating to the ‘Tone Curve’ section -> selecting Linear Curve -> and moving the left and right corners vertically opposite, as shown below.


This is how your tone curve should look when you're done

6. Now the frame numbers which are always negative white, are the colour which we want to set our white balance from, using Lightroom’s white balance dropper.


Take the white measurement from the centre of a white frame number

7. Lightroom’s White Balance ‘Temp’ and ‘Tint’ will now have changed to suit our negative’s colour balance.


This is the white balance that we shall apply to the remainder of our roll

8. Note the ‘Temp’ and ‘Tint’ values so that they can applied to the rest of the negatives.
9. Set the negative that you actually want to scan / copy in your toilet tube holder, or other suitable clamp – and take the photo.  Here’s what I ended up with:


This is how the negative looks before processing

10. I now apply invert the image by setting a linear point curve and reversing the ends:


This is how your tone curve should look when you're done

11. I manually set the colour temperature from the first film leader that we shot.


We apply the Temp and Tint settings that we obtained from our film leader

12. Now press ‘Auto’ in the Tone adjustment box to correct the colours that you are seeing and you should have a pretty much perfect image.
13. I had to add a couple of points to the tone curve to restore some contrast, you may have to do the same.
14. Please see my finished frame, cropped and straightened below.


This is the result of our prep work - a well balanced image

15. I found tweaking the colour temperature and tint slightly improved the image, but once you have a good value, it is completely repeatable across the remainder of the roll of negatives, as it should be

Completing this process results in scans that retain some of the colour properties of the film image. For extra bang, like you get from a digital camera, you can apply camera profiles to the image, or export it to photoshop / GIMP and apply ‘Auto Colours’ which liven the images up a little to more what you’d expect from a saturated digital image.

I was delighted with the outcome of this research. Stay tuned for some more where I will experiment with varying the colour of the backlight supplied by the monitor.