How to scan film using VueScan and Negative Lab Pro

[@ervczek]

I always come back to this tutorial when I get back to scanning after a break. Thank you so much for the video, I really couldn't find anything remotely close to this, as I am also scanning with Plustek using VueScan and Negative Lab Pro. Greetings from Poland, Felix!

[@cbrown7737]

I was just about gave up on this whole film scanning bits, that is until after I watched your tutorial. Your tutorial in addition with some of the other viewers comments really nailed the entire workflow. Thank you thank you. I appreciate it all. Everything is working as it should and I am now getting really nice scans. Colin

[@deportu]

Glad I could help.

[@larryfarr]

Fantastic tutorial Felix. Much appreciated. Very easy to listen to, no added fluff, lots and lots of good points to remember and write down, just what I needed. Many thanks!!

[@MrKen-wy5dk]

Wow! Best tutorial I've seen on VueScan and Negative Lab Pro. Many of the finer points now make sense. Thank you.

[@MartinHarvey]

Exceptional thanks and glad you added the white balance note!

[@sbaugh]

Wow - THANK YOU. You saved hours of frustration. Great walkthrough.

[@SGHdez]

Great tutorial my guy, you answers some of my doubts and the explanation is very clear

[@4evertoblerone]

Great! Thanks for saving my time.

[@michaelj7069]

Dang. This was the best example I've seen. Thank you.

[@jessyel]

You skipped an important part: white balance on the film border before conversion. (The conversion worked in your example since you had already done it before recording.)

[@deportu]

White balancing is unnecessary when using a dedicated scanner.

[@deportu]

I want to go ahead and correct cor for my previous comment. Correcting white balance is absolutely necessary to get a proper color and I will make a new video to reflect this. If you do not have film border to white balance from, auto white balance will do the job.

[@vBerty]

Thanks man, really useful.

[@geemedia1812]

this was so helpful you're so easy to follow along with. Great job mate!

[@deportu]

Glad it helped!

[@nicholasnorton6560]

This was extremely helpful, thank you so much. This video is exactly what I was looking for.

[@petterjg]

Great video Felix! Thanks!

[@deportu]

My pleasure!

[@annalongworth4404]

This was extremely helpful. Thanks, Félix!

[@deportu]

You're very welcome!

[@gibcoprobe66]

Great video Félix, very clear explanations. K eep up the good work

[@RewDowns]

How would you use dust removal with this?

[@sajidhussain7177]

VueScan Pro Crack is a powerful tool used by students, experienced photographers, and a wide range of organizations. This software helps you to scan documents, photos, films, and slides on various operating systems. What’s more, this application is fully compatible with Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. Furthermore, it supports over 5600 scanners from 42 worldwide manufacturers.

[@photomaster1]

Thank you very much for this..

[@deportu]

Happy to have been able to help. I will probably remake this video with some recent learnings.

[@taiwik]

Thank you for sharing

[@myronachtman4304]

What software did you use to calbrate your monitor? Working with color images on a non-calibrated display is simply a waste of time. I use the Spyder Pro spectrophotometer. It's reasonably priced and very accurate.

[@Berserked]

Thanks for the video. But for some reason, with the media for input selected as image, I get like a blue tint or a cold temp look to the film. But when I changed it to Color Negative, it seems to fixed itself and got rid of that blueness to it. was scanning Fujicolor 200 with canscan 9000f

[@deportu]

Can you share what you saw? I am curious to see what happened. I will also add that Vuescan is a little bit buggy in the previews, for whatever that’s worth.

[@vic7623]

Hey Felix! Would you ever consider doing an updated version of Vuescan? There's been a ton of updates since then and the options are different.

[@deportu]

Did not know! Let me check it out

[@HawkTron]

Nicely done!

[@deportu]

Thanks!

[@NortheasternATV]

Do you have a video talking about how to use the infared clean with the “raw save film” option?

[@deportu]

Enough people have asked for one, I will make it within the next couple of weeks. Thanks for watching!

[@baldsaul]

How do you batch scan using Vuescan with Negtive Lab Pro?

[@deportu]

Batch scanning depends on your scanner's capabilities. Unfortunately I don't have a scanner than can batch scan. Maybe this can help: www.hamrick.com/blog/2013/06/05/Batch-Scanning-Tips.html And then batch conversion using NLP: www.negativelabpro.com/guide/batch/

[@photographicamateur]

Hi Felix - many thanks for this video. Do you have any recommendations for scanning black & white negatives?

[@deportu]

You will want to scan using 16bit on the first (source) tab to improve scanning speed, but your final file should still be set to export at 48bit so that NLP can understanad it properly and convert it. If you don't have NLP or don't care to use it, you can leave the export at 16bit to get a smaller file but you will have to make the inversion yourself, it should work pretty well. Turn off infrared because it will not work on black and white film. Hope this helps. Happy to answer more questions or go more in depth if necessary.

[@photographicamateur]

@@deportu - thanks for your input - I will try that soonest.

[@toddschweikert]

Hello Félix, great tutorial, thanks. What are your thoughts on comparing silverfast for the initial scan compared to vuescan? I use NLP as well and love it, but I am curious if there are any quality or workflow benefits to either. Thanks

[@deportu]

I've used it in the past but I found Vuescan to give me better control over the scanner. I've got to give it a try to see. I'll add it to the list of things I need to try!

[@iloveferminA]

Can I scan as jpeg ? If I'm not trying to be to thorough

[@deportu]

Not for NLP. This is not the process for quick scanning.

[@riswanc]

Hi felix, nice and informative tutorial, just wondering, do you have to colour balance the scan negative after importing to Lr?

[@deportu]

You must white balance the negative using AWB or color picker on unexposed area of the film. I forgot to mention this, but I added it in the description. Hope this helps!

[@riswanc]

@@deportu thanks sorry i missed the description

[@Wayne-Jones]

Thinking of buying a Plustek 8100 scanner and was wondering if theres an optimal resolution for scan negatives. I’m new to this, so I’m doing a little research before buy any software or hardware. I have a ton of 35mm I want to digitise. Any advise would be welcome, thanks

[@deportu]

3600 DPI is what works best for me on the Plustek 8200ai. 7200 DPI gave me a bigger file (both in size and pixels) but the resolution of the image was not visibly better.

[@Wayne-Jones]

Thanks Felix, thats very helpful. I seen a few people using 3600dpi and wondered why they don’t use full res. Is the Plustek 7100dpi it’s optical resolution or is it 7100dpi interpolated?

[@deportu]

@@Wayne-Jones I can't answer that question factually, but I can tell you that in my tests I have found that there is no discernible difference between 3600 and 7200 DPI from my Plustek 8200ai scanner. If there is a difference it is almost impossible to perceive and the difference in time that you will spend scanning at such a high DPI is not worth it, not to mention the file size will be almost 4x bigger than the already ~100MB DNGs it gives you. The results this scanner will give you are good enough for web and decently sized prints, but they are not even close to being professional grade like the results you can obtain from a drum scanner. Do your own tests to determine what works for you but I value my time more than an imperceivable difference in resolution. In fact 3600 DPI is high enough that I probably wouldn't scan at 7200 even if it actually worked. I hope this helps, I've been meaning to make a few more videos explaining a few more details but I just have not had the time.

[@deportu]

@@Wayne-Jones I think my main takeaway from this is that none of the scanner companies are advertising actual DPI. They will sell you the idea that a scanner can do very high DPI when in actuality it is interpolated, which is useless if you know how to resize things properly in Photoshop. So make sure you do your own tests. 👌

[@Wayne-Jones]

Thanks Felix👍

[@x4virom]

Great vid, but i was wondering if Lock exposure really makes sense when shooting in manual (under and overexposing when needed) or if it is an auto exposure shooting thing only... thanks

[@deportu]

After further testing I've determined that lock exposure works when your entire roll has been shot in the same environment and properly exposed. Otherwise it's not as helpful. But it doesn't hurt that much either unless you have super dense negatives.

[@Paulztackett]

How do you batch scan this way? Also curious about IR if you have a moment to share. Really good video - a game changer for my scans. Thanks for posting.

[@deportu]

I have not had good results with infrared scanning because the way that the software fixes these dust marks and scratches is by averaging colors around them instead of doing something that respects the grain pattern such as a healing brush. I find that cleaning your negatives well before scanning and then doing some Photoshop work (heal or clone) afterwards gives me much more satisfying results than the IR cleaning which generally doesn't get all the small dust anyway. When I get some time I'm going to make a video on how to do it but as of right now I don't recommend doing it if you are able to clean your negatives. As for batch scanning, there is no way to do it with this scanner. It only scans one frame at a time and it is fully manual. There are other scanners that you can feed a strip of negatives into and using Vuescan, you are able to batch scan. I may do a video on how to do this if I can borrow one of these scanners.

[@juliombarrosjr]

Do you have a similar VueScan DNG in Lightroom but for color slides? Great tutorial, thanks and I wish to see more

[@deportu]

In theory color slides don't need this. if you follow these same instructions and make sure that you set it to positive scan instead of negative, youll get a good result. I've read that you can then invert the curve in Lightroom to get a negative and run it through NLP for interesting results, but I have not tried it.

[@azzalos]

Thanks for this. Do you need to buy the Professional Vuescan license? Would the standard one not work?

[@deportu]

It will not. You need the pro version for film scanning.

[@donschiele1281]

Great tutorial, thank you. Can I use Negative Lab Pro as a Photoshop plugin instead of Lightroom.?

[@deportu]

Unfortunately no, NLP is a Lightroom plugin only.

[@donschiele1281]

@@deportu Okie doke. Many thanks.!

[@Laloo65321]

Curious about why you would scan into a raw file, then make a tiff copy to edit. Couldn't you just scan into a tiff file to begin with? Does that compromise the quality in any way?

[@deportu]

NLP works better with raw files but once it makes the conversion, the TIFF is easier to edit in Lightroom or Photoshop. A TIFF can theoretically be used for NLP to convert but you would still want to make a copy before continuing to edit using Lightroom.

[@deportu]

Think of your scan as a digital negative. You want to retain as much information as possible for you to work from. If you don't care about archiving data you can just delete the raw later but I keep all of them.

[@Laloo65321]

@@deportu Gotcha. Thank you!

[@AndrewHughes-nk6no]

Hi Felix this is great. I am scanning my parents slides using 8200i. Some of them are really dark photos. What is the best way to make a photo brighter so we can see the subject? I find when I adjust the brightness, a white 'fuzz/noise' starts to appear. I would love a video on how to take a dark film into a much brighter image.

[@deportu]

Unlike negatives, slides have extremely low dynamic range. Pretty much, what you see is what you get. You might be out of luck with those. If you want one final hail mary, scan the slide as best you can (don't forget to keep it as a raw DNG), then bring it into Lightroom and INVERT the curves to make it into a negative, correct for auto white balance and use NLP to convert the slide as if it were a negative. This might work if your pictures are too far gone or very faded but it's not perfect or ideal. Good luck. Feel free to reach out to me privately if you need further assistance.

[@AndrewHughes-nk6no]

@@deportu Hi Felix, how can I send you a private email?

[@deportu]

@@AndrewHughes-nk6no You can email me at [e-mail]

[@christopherhowell3209]

I use the plustec scanner to scan my 35mm film. However , with the M/F film,..I use my dslr. I also believe colour neg pro software incorporate the viewscan in a seperate download...just wondering which download to get?..And thank you very much for your great video!

[@deportu]

If you're using a DSLR you don't need vuescan. Just bring your pictures into lightroom from your sd card and remember to change Sharpen settings to default or DSLR (not scanner).

[@rhett1734]

hey, did you use the normal license for this or do you have to purchase the proffesional (more expensive) one? Curious because this isn't doing any color conversion

[@holdmedear]

which VueScan version do i need ?

[@soilliam]

any update on the infrared tutorial or just recommended settings?

[@deportu]

Hi there. I will be making another video eventually. I personally do not like the way VueScan fixes dust. The process takes much longer and the results are not great. I do my cleaning manually (LR or PS) and try to keep my negatives clean. Regardless, if you still want to try, for infrared, you set up your Input as 64bit (that means 48bit + 16bit infrared) but do NOT change the Output from 48bit or NLP will fail to create a proper conversion. On the Filter tab you may change the setting to Light or higher if you like. Test them out to see which works best for you. In the Output tab, make sure to check "Raw Save Film" or to click SAVE after you scan each shot.

[@soilliam]

@@deportu Thank you, I'll test that out see how it goes

[@AlexRobertson4]

What scanner as you using please? You mention that it is a dedicated scanner but not which one it is.

[@deportu]

Hi Alexander, I'm using a Plustek 8200ai for this tutorial.

[@AlexRobertson4]

@@deportu thank you, very informative tutorial!

[@HV71851]

Last time I used VueScan it did not have the option to save the file in RAW or DNG, it does now? What version is it? Thank you!

[@deportu]

Are you using the paid pro version?

[@HV71851]

Since I watched your video, I checked VueScan and there was an update for it. I’m up to date now, and have the option to save RAW & DNG. Thanks!

[@exxitus666]

Could you please do a review of negmaster? Love that software for converting negatives!

[@deportu]

I've tried downloading it a few times but the website doesn't seem to work. Are you able to download it?

[@negmaster456]

@@deportu Todd told me. I checked this and everything seems ok. I can upload the demo to a different place if you wish.

[@deportu]

@@negmaster456 I will attempt it again and let you know! Thanks for the prompt response.

[@soilliam]

goat

[@erikleypoldt8275]

Not sure why you use film if you post process so much? Just shoot digital.

[@deportu]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I invite you to try to get a film scan without making a single edit to the photograph. You'll get a simple negative and nothing else. Conversion is an editing process. Any lab worth its salt has a colorist there to make sure your scans are converted into positives that look right. They are EDITING your shots to get a good conversion. You edit a picture from the second you decide to take it to the moment you decide what format to finally present it in. Editing is ever-present in all forms of photography. How much you edit is up to you. And within this process I barely made any changes to the scan.

[@itserc]

You'd be surprised at the amount of "post" involved in a real darkroom, especially when making prints.