Inverting Color Negative Film - Advanced Tutorial

This video is to add on to my last tutorial here: • Manual Inversion of Co...
This is a more difficult night scene where the film was a bit underexposed, making it harder to choose a white point and requiring some extra tweaks compared to the easy daylight image I showed you last time. There is also an introduction to luminosity masks in this video.
To get the luminosity mask action go here: www.alexburkephoto.com/blog/2...
And for the general description of the process see this blog post: www.alexburkephoto.com/blog/2...

[@jaytayag810]

The Bob Ross of color negative conversions. :p You make it look easy, Alex!

[@AlexBurke]

Hahahaha! Thanks Jay 😁

[@allenfrizsell7267]

Remove negative ok n I'm in k NC

[@morten1]

such a specific title, love it

[@BelmontHillTV]

Watching this makes me realize my scanning / edit process is borderline horrendous.

[@AlexBurke]

Hope this helps a bit!

[@daviddavis5631]

I've been looking for such a technique for a long time. Very Grateful.

[@AlexBurke]

Glad you've found it helpful! Thanks for watching.

[@blackjackdavey333]

Very clear and concise tutorial, so glad I found this channel!

[@AlexBurke]

Glad you found it helpful! Thanks for watching

[@lafilledelamort3081]

simply amazing, thank you very much Alex!

[@Tids_]

Hi Alex. I've recently stumbled on your work as I'm venturing into 4x5 and your website article on choosing a 4x5 camera and lenses is such a great resource. Your portfolio is superb. Please do consider making more content for KZbin. With the resurgence in analog photography over the last few years and film manufacturers making film stocks again, I can't think of a better time to share your work and processes on here. I for one would love to see you in the field crafting your images as you are among the very best LF photographers in the world imho who deserves a much larger audience. Thanks for all of the resources on your website also. Cheers from the UK 👍

[@pushingfilm]

Such a solid tutorial! Thanks putting this out 🙂👍

[@AlexBurke]

Thanks for watching, hope the method works for you!

[@efimsoldatov4113]

Perfect as always!!!

[@AlexBurke]

Thanks for watching!

[@ceci1017]

Just wanna jump in to say that both of your tutorials changed my life hahahaah Thanks very much Alex!!😌😌

[@AlexBurke]

Wonderful! Really glad to hear that!

[@tonysantophotography]

Alex, you are a photoshop and color negative genius! I'll have to try this on my new batch of color negatives that I'm developing. Thanks for sharing! Tony

[@AlexBurke]

Thanks Tony! Hope you enjoy putting this method to use.

[@GordonUppercut]

Really great stuff!

[@polskpojjkeh]

Just wanted to point out that as someone who mainly shoots black and white, the eye dropper tool for blackpoint is a lifesaver. No longer do I have to sit and tweak curves manually and checking the color value when inverting my negatives. Excited to try this on color negs! Thanks.

[@valdezapg]

Wow thanks this works really well for fixing color casts for slides with vuescan and plustek!

[@alexandermatragos]

It always fascinates me seeing how other people use photoshop and how you can do the same thing with a million different ways. The level of control that it gives you is really unmatched by any other software. I like the speed with which you can batch edit stuff in Lightroom but I always end up editing my work in photoshop just because I know that I can get so much more out of an image. I liked your technique, nice and quick video.

[@AlexBurke]

Yeah that's the amazing thing about photoshop! So many ways to accomplish similar goals. Glad you enjoyed this method.

[@martincutrone5816]

Great video! Clear explanation of the inversion process. Have some time off next week, looking forward to trying it on some of the negs from Utah. Somehow, you make the black box of Photoshop seem almost doable!

[@AlexBurke]

Thanks Marty! Glad you enjoyed the video, hope the process works out for you. Always happy to help unlock the secrets of negatives!

[@tylerhuttosmith]

Oh man thank you!

[@josednn]

Thank you very much!

[@klasgelinder]

Thanks for sharing!

[@NikolaosTsarmpopoulos]

Thanks for sharing.

[@valdemarcaballero5298]

fantastic fantastic video...... thanks for sharing!!!!!!!

[@AlexBurke]

Glad you found it helpful!

[@ale_s45]

Thanks a lot

[@valdezapg]

Just wow those transparencies on the lightbox @ 0:52

[@ZisisKardianos]

I missed you when you did the duplicate leyers and then merge. But all in all very informative tutorial. I mostly use your invertion method with my medium format negatives when I want to take the most of them. I usually strugle with night or twillight images because if the exposure is right and corrected for reciprocity failure and if you drag the color curves just before clipping, you often end up with an image that looks more bright than it should be.

[@AlexBurke]

Thanks for watching, glad you found the video helpful. The merging of the background and inversion curves layer was just for the sake of displaying in photoshop. On some images with subtle gradients (like this one in the sky), Photoshop really struggles to display layers with big edits like that so it shows nasty banding and incorrect colors. Night and twilight images are always the challenge, as you said you need to back off on the "white point" sometimes since you want it to appear as a night scene. Sometimes you can just not move them over to the left as far in the curves layer, or you can drag down somewhere in the middle of the curve to create an appropriate luminance to the image for night scenes.

[@ZisisKardianos]

@@AlexBurke Thank you, I tried your method in a twilight image with bright spots. I also used the luminosity masks. I wanted to keep it low key and as close to the original scene as I remember it. drive.google.com/file/d/1NfB8RfaHp8PukgVkoxoea-ipw4wtrU4w/view?usp=sharing Please check if you can and tell me what you think.

[@AlexBurke]

@@ZisisKardianos I would say that looks pretty good! It's a faithful representation of a nighttime scene.

[@boom5474]

Hi there. I'm using a plustek film scanner for my 35mm pictures, and I don't get any borders, how should do I do? Thanks for the very clear video anyways.

[@demachina9145]

Any tips on converting standard digital image to inverted film like image? (with color film "orange" tint)

[@mehmaks]

Don't know if this changed over the years but for me holding ALT in the curve layer only chnages the raster. I can't get clipping like this :(

[@palladiumoncarbon]

You have let me keep my $99 in my bank account instead of spending it on NLP. Thanks!

[@AlexBurke]

Glad this method worked for you!

[@wetpossum]

Alex is there an advantage to using “invert” vs using the curve layer to invert? I usually just use ctrl-I for that, just curious if you have an opinion

[@AlexBurke]

Invert essentially does the same thing as a basic invert curves layer, but it is destructive (unless you make a background copy). Also, in this video I show how that invert curves layer can be tweaked a bit more to get you closer with some adjustments.

[@GoneWithFilm]

Thanks I learned a lot from this. I've followed your instructions from the previous video as well as this one. Most color negative films turn out well. However, I'm having problems in inverting Kodak 500T cine film. Any tips for inverting that or Cinestill?

[@AlexBurke]

Hello, glad you enjoyed the video. I haven't worked with any of the cine films as they don't make them in 4x5 sizes. Is it a white balance problem? I often think in a subtractive way with curves layers. If it's too green/cyan, pull down on the green channel. Too blue? pull down on the blue, etc. Sometimes the highlight point can be dragged over to the right for a particular color channel if you're having trouble with a general color cast.

[@GoneWithFilm]

@@AlexBurke Thanks! I'll giev it another try. I think it's a mixture of both the white balance and colors too.

[@joeltunnah]

@@GoneWithFilm I’ve also had lots of trouble color balancing Cinestill 50D. Technically you’re cross-processing it in C-41 chemistry, it’s an ECN-2 process film. That might be the problem.

[@LeVampire666]

Is it possible to repeat this result with GIMP software?

[@sarmatiko]

Thank you! I just started converting [grand]parents film\slide archive from 60-70s and technics that you showed in this video really helped to improve things a lot (from "this looks OK but something is missing" to "quite good, I like it enough"). Quality of materials isn't so good though (old soviet films that been through tough times, including my immature hands 30 years ago :D) so I see a great amount of cleaning and retouching in my future. Do you have any advices for positive film processing? Skipping inverting part is kind of obvious but maybe there are some other caveats?

[@AlexBurke]

Glad this video helped! That's great to be able to go through some old family memories. Slides are pretty straightforward, mostly you're just trying to make it look like the slide. Use a curve layer to set a proper black point and white point, and often you don't need to play around with color channels so much since the colors in slides are beautiful. That can depend a lot on your scanning equipment too.

[@sarmatiko]

@@AlexBurke thank you! I'm using Epson RX700 since there are a lot of those on second hand market now (people usually get rid of them as soon as ink dry out and printer is unusable) and for something like 15$ it's really decent 3200dpi film scanner. Btw is it a good idea to remove "film color" from positives or it is unnecessary?

[@Kerberos2233]

great video! I actually have similar workflow: I scan as a 48bit HDR RAW in Silverfast and have fixed color inversion presets which get me about 90% to a finished scan. This way I can shoot C41 like slide film with absolutely consistent colors between separate images. Something I noticed though is that the lab is not 100% consistent with the C41 development. Sometimes my images get for example a red shift and even the film base color is not always exactly the same with the same film stock. The solution then is to alter the preset for each roll of film which can be a bit annoying. Have you ever noticed any inconsistencies in the development of your C41 films?

[@AlexBurke]

Thanks! Glad you've found a process that works well. You're completely correct that it's hard to find an exact process that works every single time, mostly needing an adjustment to the film base subtraction color. It's also possible to expose negatives quite differently for various contrast goals which makes things tricky when inverting. I would say that every developing method results in a different color to the film base (and the resulting image). I've noticed that when I scan film for customers that use a lab the film base is often waaay different than it is on my home developed film. Mine are generally consistent, but there can be some minor variation as I re-use my chemicals about three times when developing a lot of film.

[@Kerberos2233]

@@AlexBurke thx for the answer! I thought I just had particularly bad labs in my local area but it's good to hear that other people have similar issues :D

[@jameslenney]

Thanks for the video. Given the cost of software like Lightroom, it's quite bad that there's no function for basic conversions and that it all must be done manually. I guess it shows that AI, despite its power, can't be trusted to automate things that relate to 'taste'. I suppose Adobe's tests thus far have produced weird results and strange colours.

[@SD_Alias]

Your conversions look good to me. But i try the same with mine and they look really weird. I tried many evenings but i am not satisfied with the results. May be my scans are not so goodas yours? Meanwhile i invested in a Plug named Negmaster for LR and PS and now the results are fine. Negative Lab Pro is good too, but Negmaster is a bit better for my scans from linoscan 1450…

[@efimsoldatov4113]

Dear Alex, could you please answer: will the exposure of film while taking photo by dslr affect the further inversion and curves adjustment? I mean should we normal expose the film by dslr or may be underexpose or overexpose? And will your method of invention described in the first video be applicable for winter time photos when it’s lots of snow in the frame? - looked like a bit complicated for inverting when l tried;( Thank you in advance and thank you for your great work!

[@AlexBurke]

That's a good question, and some people might have a different opinion. For me, using the drum scanner, I scan all negatives *exactly* the same no matter what the exposure was. There are no adjustments made while scanning and the end result resembles the film faithfully. Essentially, the border from one sheet of Portra to the next should be the same hue and lightness even if the scenes were completely different, aside from any minor variations that happen from developing, etc. Personally, I would find one exposure that works for all frames and stick with it when scanning negatives. Some people might advise that it's best to adjust for different scenes, I can't speak too well about DSLR scanning as I don't do it but for me consistency would be key. You can then make up for any exposure differences when doing the inversion. You're essentially choosing the white point with a curves layer, so it works for all types of scenes - though it needs some adjustments for night, twilight, and sunset work that doesn't have a true white point.

[@efimsoldatov4113]

@@AlexBurke thank you too much again - for the extended answer! So, will develop my skills and increase experience then:)

[@jealius4340]

hey, would you ever consider making a video about what scanning method mortal people should go with? I would love to be able to play with a drumbscanner, but as the joker said “i’m like a dog chasing an ambulance, if i cought one I wouldn’t know what to do with it”.

[@valdezapg]

For me scanning slides comes out more-color-accurate with vuescan, and better colors for negative (using negafix where you select your film type) with silverfast, i use plustek 35mm scanner.

[@clairegullison2334]

is there another method to adjust the white point instead of holding 'alt' until the colors start to appear?

[@AlexBurke]

It's the best method I've found, but if you have something that you know is supposed to be true neutral in color you can use the eyedropper tool for midtones in the curves layer.

[@c.augustin]

Some neat tricks with the luminosity masks there, I have to have a closer look. What about doing the "subtract the film base" step by doing a white-balance on the border beforehand? (If using a scan TIFF it can be done destructively with the Camera Raw filter; as I use raw files from a digital camera, I can do it just in the development process.)

[@AlexBurke]

Luminosity masks are pretty neat! Your idea of setting the white point to the film base before inverting is probably acceptable. There's several ways to subtract the film base, some before the inversion and some after. So long as you can back off on the adjustment (similar to how I set opacity to 80%) so that you don't fully clip the shadows so early on in the process. However, since you worded it as setting the "white balance" I suppose that would only change the color and not the luminosity. Worth a try!

[@c.augustin]

@@AlexBurke Well, this "setting the white balance" method is the "usual" way of getting rid of the film base color (mandatory for using Negative Lab Pro). In theory it should actually be better to preserve the shadows (even though I found NLP to lack especially in this regard, so that I'm now trying to generally get rid of it).

[@AlexBurke]

@@c.augustin Ah that makes sense. I've actually never tried NLP because I don't have lightroom (still using an old fully-purchased version of PS). And also I enjoy cracking the secrets of negatives myself!

[@c.augustin]

@@AlexBurke I don't like the dependency of NLP to Lightroom either, it it does not work that great. Colors are mostly fine, but shadows and highlights are not. For most of my professional work (not photography related) I'll stick to Adobe CS6, so I know that the use of the Camera Raw "filter" with TIFF is very limited in PS CS6 (only on opening a TIFF with holding a modifier key, if I remember correctly). I have the Photography Bundle, so I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to Photoshop versions.

[@AlexBurke]

@@c.augustin I'm also working with an old version of PS (CS5) but it works well enough for this sort of manual inversion. I did use Camera Raw several years back and at first thought it was a good way to work with film scans but have since moved away from it. Hopefully this helps nail those inversions for you!

[@daxu1489]

Hi Alex, I shall suggest a "negative-gamma" inversion based on the density logics. Try just use "gamma"+"gain"+"divide" to inverse the positive scan of negatives. This method is developed according to both the Cineon standards and a direct mathematical interpretation of RA-4 color printing characteristics. I believe this is the method that most inbuilt scan softwares adopt to invert the image in the preview stage. :P

[@AlexBurke]

Hello, I'm curious in this method. Are you talking about using Photoshop or another program? The terms "gamma + gain" are not ones I'm familiar with as far as Photoshop adjustments go, nor do they show up whatsoever in a Google search. I'm familiar with divide as a blend mode for a curves layer (or any kind of layer). Would you mind elaborating more?

[@daxu1489]

@@AlexBurke Yes, sure. The divide mixing is performed by placing the negative image (with adjusted gamma and gain) on the top of (not under) a uniformly dark colored layer. The color layer beneath negs has the dark color of white point in negative layer, understood as the maximum neutral-tone(gray color) density. Then the inversion is achieved, in a "negative-gamma" way. This method helps to maintain the consistency across all scenes, because the color print inversion (in RA4 process) works the same.

[@daxu1489]

​@@AlexBurke The terms gamma and gain may correspond to the left two switches that we adjust in "level" adjustment layers, in some workflows. And these need to be performed in three channels ( R G B), in order to mock the "color filter" adjustments as done in color printing.

[@AlexBurke]

@@daxu1489 Thank you for the explanation. It sounds like a bit of a different way of doing a similar thing - removing the negative base layer. I gave it a try and could see how it might work well if there was a certain white point, such as a puffy white cloud in a daytime scene. I tried it on one of my sunrise images and the method seemed to give less flexibility to controlling the delicate hue of the not-quite-white point. I wonder if that explains a bit why scanner software has so much trouble with sunrises and sunsets. I suppose the gamma of the base layer color could be messed with a bit. I could work a little more with it and see if it turns out to be more accurate sometimes. Thanks again for sharing a different technique, I really appreciate the addition to the conversation!

[@averyadzima5527]

Can you set a proper black point without having the film border?

[@AlexBurke]

Not using this same method. In that case you could use curves and drag over the shadow (left) side the way I did with the highlights. I really prefer this film border method though, so if you can move the film around in whatever holder you're using to get the film border it's really quite useful.

[@HueyPProductions]

Is this part of your film to digital ebook?

[@valdezapg]

He does cover scanning and inverting in the ebook.

[@YoYoYo]

What scanning software do you use?

[@AlexBurke]

I scan with newcolor, which is specific for the Heidelberg scanners.

[@alexanderalexandrov]

@@AlexBurke hi Alex. Does it need a specific pc/mac version and operating system version to run on?

[@AlexBurke]

@@alexanderalexandrov NewColor is generally run on a Power Mac G4 running OSX 10.2.8. There is a version for Windows XP but there are some limitations to that version (file size and sharpness control)

[@alexanderalexandrov]

@@AlexBurke thank you. Is there any specific hardware requirements to be able to work it? Memory / hdd / processor? Trying to get mine up and running.

[@AlexBurke]

@@alexanderalexandrov The main thing is you need to find the SCSI card made specifically for macs. I don't know the model number, but there's only one that will work and it's rare and you need the driver for it.

[@BatteryMop]

TIL that I know nothing about editing film photos

[@ericsarnoski6278]

A drum scanner ......$$$$$