Introduction, A Few Simple Options, Film profiles suck, Scanning
Using The Histogram, & The Finished Article
Introduction
Hamrick Software’s VueScan is perhaps the most flexible and powerful piece of scanning software available to photographers today. Many people fall foul of its myriad features and options – it can be quite daunting when you first start the software and begin to explore the different option pages. I’m going to explain how to get the best out of VueScan with the minimum of fuss, the least fiddling, and the least deviation from the software’s default options.
If you’ve already got the software installed (at the time of writing the latest version is 8.4.70), then now is perhaps a good time to reset the options to default, you can do this from within the file menu “File->Default Options”
A Few Simple Options
The first thing I turn off in viewscan is the automatic saving of scans – you’re probably going to want to do things like adjust white balance, white point, and blackpoint before committing your scan to disk, so there’s just no need to have this option enabled.
You’ll also want to turn on VueScan’s histogram Graph, you can do this from the Image menu “Image -> graph b/w”, or by hitting ctrl-2. You want the b/w graph because this allows you to adjust white and black point using 2 graphical sliders (explained later in the article).
Film profiles suck
VueScan comes with some pre-configured film profiles, you may think that these are just great, but in reality they aren’t – they just take control away from you, and will more than likely deliver a scan that just does not come up to scratch. Why? Because each and every roll of negative film you shoot has it’s very own slight variations in both manufacturing tolerance, exposure, film fogging (heaven forbid), and most importantly development. All of these combine to change the film’s base colour density – so by choosing a preset you are using a ‘best guess’.
The good news is that there is absolutely no reason to settle for a best guess, and this is because VueScan will allow you to sample the base colour of your film directly. These tips are available on the VueScan homepage, but I’ve combined them with some screenshots to make it even more clear. So without further ado, here’s how it’s done…
Firstly you need to preview your film. Click the Preview button! When the preview finishes you should select an area of clear film between frames (or in the film leader). If the ‘Lock Exposure tickbox is ticked, untick it (see the picture below this one)
Hit the preview button again, when the preview finishes tick the “Lock exposure” tickbox.
Hit the preview button once more, when the preview finishes tick the “Lock film base colour” tickbox.
With these simple steps you have calibrated your roll of film. You only need to do this once per roll, it can be a pain, but it will save you major headaches in post processing.
Scanning
Now that you’ve optimised VueScan for your current roll of film, you’ll want to go ahead and scan some photos. A lot of people like to keep the film borders and frame numbers in their scans, I think this is a complete waste of time – it will also give you more hard work setting levels in post processing because your beautifully crafted photo will be competing with the levels of the border & bright yellow frame numbers. The answer is simple: use the frame crop box to highlight a scanning target just within the borders of each frame.
When you’re happy that you’ve got the frame correctly selected hit the Scan button.
Using the histogram
Now that your scan is in memory you can do some adjustments, there are 2 main ones you’ll probably want to do, the first of which is using the histogram to produce a nice flat image which can easily be adjusted in PhotoShop. Drag the sliding pointers to left and right so that all elements of the graph are between them – if you want to clip some areas then adjust accordingly.
The final adjustment you may want to make is the white balance – find an area in the scan which is neutral and right click on it (hold down control on mac). VueScan will automatically adjust white balance, if you picked the wrong area just try again until you get something that looks correct — You’ll probably only want to do this once per roll (or once for each set of photos with the same lighting conditions) to ensure your scans are colour matched. Double right clicking resets the auto white balance.
The Finished Article
So now it’s time to save your frame, click on the disk icon or use the save image option in the file menu.
Hopefully you should now be able to successfully scan colour negative film and be sure that you’ll get consistent results. You’ll need to use Curves and Levels in PhotoShop to get the best out of your scans. Good Luck!
Ben explained this technique to me recently and I can vouch for its effectiveness.
Having been submerged in the woes of scanning for much of the past 6 months, its clear to me that using vuescan and this work around is almost the only consistent technique avaliable. At least in my experience.
plus the screen shots are skill. Thanks Ben.
Comment by sam bedford — April 22, 2008 @ 8:54 am
Nice – one thing though, double clicking for whitebalance resets it, one click sets it (IIRC)
Comment by Dan Burbridge — April 22, 2008 @ 10:52 am
Oops, yeah you’re right – article amended!
Comment by BennehBoy — April 22, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
Am I an idiot for using Epson Scan?
Comment by stpiduko — April 22, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
Nope, just use what you feel comfortable with.
Comment by BennehBoy — April 22, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
A great big thank you for making the mystical simple.
Comment by Sery — May 9, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Thanks!
I bought Vuescan a year ago, but never really got used to it (Laaaazy).
Finally with your tips and a bit of reading I have been able to put it to work.
Lovely.
If I can manage to use Digital ICE with color negatives I will be the happiest man in the world
Comment by Enric Martinez — June 7, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
Thanks!
I first tried Vuescan about a year and a half ago and had an utterly horrible time try to scan color negatives. I wish I had this tutorial back then, it would have saved me turning to my Lab for the scans. (Fuji NPH 120 6×6’s shot with my Rolleiflex TLR). I’ve since upgraded from a Umax Powerlook 1100 to a (yet to arrive) Epson Perfection 4870 and am EAGERLY! awaiting giving color negative scanning and VueScan another workout.
Richard
Comment by Richard Ward — July 24, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
I too have been struggling with colour negatives and this has cleared up the issue very nicely. Thank you for putting in the time and effort. Im off to try again.
Peter
Comment by Peter — October 19, 2008 @ 10:38 pm
Just created a tutorial on how to do exposure locking with B&W film that I think compliments this great article as well:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kediwah/sets/72157608202483073/
Comment by Christopher Layne — October 21, 2008 @ 8:28 am
Thanks Chris.
Comment by BennehBoy — October 21, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
[...] Re: Vuescan and Fuji PRO400H Same problem here but I am going to try this soon as suggested by the link below…. Better colour neg scanning with VueScan. | Urban Motion [...]
Pingback by Vuescan and Fuji PRO400H - Leica User Forum — October 22, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
I did a little side to side test with the epson software and the vuescan software on my v500, using the methods you explain here on the vuescan, and the difference was day and night, in favour of the epson software. Like a fuji s5 file on high saturation vs a d200 file on low saturation, and the vuescan won’t seem to ever get exposed right – it seems to work so strange aswell, like its scanning way too dark and then correcting itself (abit)
I might give it another chance for the black/white, but colournegatives i’m really done with this.
Only downsite of the epson software is that its heavy and slow on my system.
oh well,thanks anyway for the tutorial anyway. it was worth the try.
Comment by rockyhorror — November 7, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
Fantastic! This is so helpful. You made my day.
Comment by Matthew — December 23, 2008 @ 2:24 pm
This looked like the ideal solution, but as a totally inexperienced VueScan user I ran into an immediate snag. I followed your steps and had Mode=transparency and Media=Color negative, but when I hit Preview, I got a positive image, whereas your tutorial shows a negative. So I changed media to slidefilm and that did produce negative images. I then proceeded as you suggested and got some pretty good results. Was that the right way to go?
I also looked at your Flickr images and was inspired. I’m velomaniac by the way.
Comment by Peter Unterweger — January 26, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
Hi Peter,
I have no clue why the output was reversed for you, perhaps it’s peculiar to your scanner? Have you tried getting the latest version of Vuescan?
I no longer use this method by the way, I’m now using a product called ColorNeg which I’ll be blogging about soon.
Ben
Comment by BennehBoy — January 27, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Thanks, I am using the latest Pro Version, and will be interested in ColorNeg. I have Kodachromes and negatives going back 40+ years.
Peter
Comment by Peter Unterweger — January 28, 2009 @ 9:14 am
i’d love to see your colorneg workflow
Comment by christian — February 16, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
Thanks so much for this, Ben! Very helpful.
Comment by Chris Norris — May 3, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
Hi, Thanks for this.
But I always wonder if the film edges are to be included in the scan area since I came across scanning an image of a bright pink wall with blue writings that contain no 100% black nor 0% white in the frame. If you exclude the edges the Vuescan will enhance contrast to set shadowy part of the image as 100% black and brightest gray part with 0% white to scan in a wildly exaggerated way. While including film edges tells Vuescan at least a complete black point so it scans the midtone only. It seem to work on both positives and negatives. I set black cut-off point in “Color” panel at 2 to 3 % to keep the edges as 100% black. Please give it a try.
Nyakayama
Comment by Nyakayama — May 21, 2009 @ 5:36 am
This is exactly the tutorial I’ve been searching for to help me with color correction on my scanned negatives. I was so close to giving up on film & going digital until I found this.
Thanks!
Comment by cara — July 16, 2009 @ 5:57 am
This tutorial has helped me get much better colour scans from my negatives – thanks so much!
Comment by James — July 21, 2009 @ 11:47 am
[...] using auto anything. Grab a demo version of Vuescan and follow this guide. Manully adjust your colors of the resulting scan with curves. If it is still grey, then worry [...]
Pingback by Issue with Ektar - The Photo Forum - Photography Discussion Forum — August 31, 2009 @ 2:32 am
[...] [...]
Pingback by Kodak ektar - P — September 1, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
[...] V750) For Vuescan and color negs I recommend the calibration and work flow explained in: Better colour neg scanning with VueScan. | Urban Motion [...]
Pingback by Problems scanning color negatives (Fuji Reala and Epson Perfection V750) - Leica User Forum — September 23, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
Hi Ben, how are you? Just a simple question, what’s the matter about numbero of scan pass? Should I use 1, 2 or more? I can’t understand the difference.
cheers,
m
Comment by garghe — November 14, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Hi Garghe,
The idea with the scan passes (number of samples) is that vuescan averages the results to try and subtract any noise, the more you use the slower it will be but theoretically cleaner – some scanners cant take multiple samples from the same physical pass so you can introduce a lack of critical sharpness by the very small errors introduced in scan head placement (most of the newer Epsom scanners will take multiple samples without having to move the head, 4990, v700 etc)
Don’t confuse this with multiexposure! Multiexposure is where the scanner does more than 1 pass with different lamp brightness, in effect it attempts to construct an HDR scan by extracting more detail from the shadow and highlight areas.
Comment by BennehBoy — November 14, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
I have followed the steps outlined above, am too ran into the same situation as what post #15 described. However I believe the image you are using is a positive of the color neg, though I don’t understand how you get it to be exposed at such high value (?) When I hit the preview, the film gap is near black. So nothing works as this article intended thereafter. I made sure all the settings are the same under Input (uncheck some boxes) and Color (set white balance to none) as instructed above, still nothing works. Am I missing on any other settings? Also every time when I re-crop the film, VueScan automatically adjust the exposure (or whatever it is). How can I turn this off?
Comment by wei — December 27, 2009 @ 1:08 am
The preview image gets inverted by vuescan when the ‘colour negative’ tickbox is checked, that’s why it appears as a positive image in the preview pane.
Vuescan also adjusts the _preview_ exposure view (not the final output) depending upon what is selected within the bounding box, it automatically sets the brightest area as ‘white’ and the darkest as ‘black’, this completely throws out the rest of the preview area. So, by throwing a selection box around the film gap it should brighten up considerably allowing you to fine tune the selection to only clear film area.
I hope that made sense, just play about with it, you’ll see what I mean.
Comment by BennehBoy — December 28, 2009 @ 10:02 pm
[...] interessant, speziell die Berücksichtigung des orange – maskierten Steges zwischen den Bildern: Better colour neg scanning with VueScan. | Urban Motion __________________ http://www.flickriver.com/photos/36573929@N00/ Lesen schadet der [...]
Pingback by Vuescan Wie scannt man Color Negative? - Leica User Forum — January 8, 2010 @ 7:52 pm
I’ve been scanning negatives with Vuescan and a Nikon LS-5000 using this method, but without using the histogram. I save as a .dng file and open in Photoshop Camera Raw. I make adjustments and then open in Photoshop. Most times the scan requires very little adjustment to the levels and curves. Is it better to set the histogram before opening in Photoshop Camera Raw? I am a beginner and I would appreciate any advice.
Comment by Elaine — January 15, 2010 @ 8:50 pm
It probably doesn’t make much difference – maybe try both ways and see which actually looks/prints better?
Comment by BennehBoy — January 18, 2010 @ 2:21 pm
Since the purchase of my first film scanner a couple of years ago (Plustek OpticFilm 7300) I’ve experimented with more than 70 color negative rolls with the bundled software (SilverFast SE) and lately with VueScan: the results was usually mediocre.
With this simple guide the output is really improved! I started to rescan again my color negative stock, following it’s directions.
Thank you so much.
Comment by Juan Carlos Martins — February 24, 2010 @ 11:23 am
Thanks for sharing this workflow.
It sounds so logical, it makes sense.
I’ve tried it a few months ago, and I’ve tried it again last week on Fuji PRO 800Z (using an Epson V700)… but I just don’t get the correct colours. Reds go pink, other colours are also all over the place.
Is this such a “different”/difficult film? Does anybody have experience with scanning it? Hints are most welcome.
Comment by Jacco de Kraker — February 25, 2010 @ 10:17 am
@Jacco, 800Z can be hard to get balanced – you might want to look at a product called colorneg (colorperfect now), I’ve been using it for the last year and it has saved quite a bit of time over the procedure above.
Ben
Comment by BennehBoy — February 25, 2010 @ 9:57 pm