Negative software?

Hi all,

So i have recently started back into film photography and have taken photos of my negatives into DNG.
Obviously these are orange and i know i CAN use lightroom to edit them but from what i have read it can be a long winded method. I was wondering if there was any software people could recommend for turning a negative to a standard positive?

The shots are colour by the way and no i don't want to buy a special photo scanner.
I am running OSX on my mac mini but can run any windows VM if need be.

Do you mean they are orange before or after inverting the colors?

before, like the actual physical negs and images taken, I know i can invert and then tweak a lot but trying to make it as quick and painless as possible.

anything on this site helpful https://www.iamthejeff​.com …-c-41-negative-film-scans

Thanks for that, will try the action when i get home, was hoping there was something similar to that but for lightroom so i didnt have to run extra. For some reason photoshop is a scary thing for me! lol

To answer your specific question I am not aware of any software that does precisely what you want and this is not something I have tried myself.

I have a few old family images taken from colour negative that have been turned into digital files using a film scanner and I think this may be the only practical option. The colour comes out looking fairly normal and can then be adjusted in Photoshop, however you do need a film scanner and colour negative is notoriously tricky. The files themselves are Tiff rather than DNG.

Unfortunately scanner profiling does not really work with negatives due to the orange mask that varies considerably with changes in exposure and cannot reliably match a target. Scanning colour negative is rather like being colour blind and forced to play twister with a slipped disc.

The typical workflow for film negs is to produce a linear scan and then process the file into a positive for printing/web. There are specific applications that are designed around this workflow and automatically remove the film base, etc. and invert the color using a profile specific to the film type.

If you choose not to scan your negs, then you are essentially dealing with a raw file that will be converted to a gamma-encoded file - I suppose there are workflows that would use regular raw processing tools to deal with the inversion, but you may not preserve the actual film color characteristics in doing so. A simple google search returns many links on how to do this in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Take a look at this collection of information related to a product called ColorNeg. http://www.c-f-systems.com/ColorNegat​iveFAQ.html

Hopefully the information contained on the site might help you adopt a workflow that works best for you.

kirk

Well i'm actually using the lr mobile app on my phone and lomo camera scanner hardware

Silverfast has some, ahem, profiles, and is able to deal with the orange mask.

I used colorneg a few years back and it worked well, but recognize it's not easy. There's also software like vuescan that operates while scanning, but you'll always need further adjustment.

That said, such a primitive scanning setup as you're using is guaranteed to give sub optimal results. Phones and scanners don't have the sensor linearity you need for good results. This is because color neg film, in addition to the orange mask, is a low contrast medium. So ideally you need a scanner with good bit depth so you can increase the contrast without artifacts such as banding.

Thanks for the replies all,

I think i will try some of the PS actions and i have a trial of colour neg.
in all honesty my pure aim is to get a better scan than the shop i used before (which were horriffic)
If i get reasonable even viewable results i will look into buying a dedicated scanner.

http://digitol.free.fr​/forum/viewtopic.php?f​=2&t=281
but i's for DPP...

Thanks, Sadly i no longer use Canon, I use a sony mirrorless and my iphone raw.