Scanning 8×10 glass negs in 2 passes

GP
Posted By
Gene Palmiter
Jul 7, 2004
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251
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I will be doing some photo prep for a book in the next couple of days. One thing I was asked about is whether I can scan 8×10 glass negatives. My plan is to scan with my Epson 3200 and scan it in 2 passes. PS-CS has some sort of panoramic stitching built-in….I will RTFM.

Does this sound feasible? Anybody out there done anything similar? Any problems to expect?


Thanks,
Gene Palmiter
freebridge design group
freebridge magazine

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Pjotr Wedersteers
Jul 7, 2004
Gene Palmiter wrote:
I will be doing some photo prep for a book in the next couple of days. One thing I was asked about is whether I can scan 8×10 glass negatives. My plan is to scan with my Epson 3200 and scan it in 2 passes. PS-CS has some sort of panoramic stitching built-in….I will RTFM.

Does this sound feasible? Anybody out there done anything similar? Any problems to expect?

I know some scanners (or rather the firmware or drivers) auto-adapt the scanned image, adjusting colour and/or contrast and such. I am not sure you will like that to happen.

If I scan things in parts I include a small graycard-like piece of paper in the scan, that allows me to check for possible changes in scan results. Photoshop CS Stitch works quite well for me. just make sure you have enough overlap and indeed check the manual or some tutorials for the best stitch results.

I have the photoshop for photographers book with tutorial cd, it has a nice videotut on stitching as well. (Amazon, now just over 30 bucks)

Pjotr
MR
Mike Russell
Jul 7, 2004
Gene Palmiter wrote:
I will be doing some photo prep for a book in the next couple of days. One thing I was asked about is whether I can scan 8×10 glass negatives. My plan is to scan with my Epson 3200 and scan it in 2 passes. PS-CS has some sort of panoramic stitching built-in….I will RTFM.

Does this sound feasible? Anybody out there done anything similar? Any problems to expect?

This should not be a problem. Try to disable the scanner’s auto exposure so that the tonalities of the two halves will match. I just posted some procedures in the "Grayscale Transform" thread for using curves to match two adjoining images that should provide fine tuning if it is needed.

Another alternative is to photograph the negative with a digital camera, thus getting the entire image in one pass. If you have many negs to do this could save a lot of time and the results will probably be sharp enough for book reproduction.

Once you have your images, do be careful about the dynamic range issue. Many glass negatives, particularly large format, were made before enlarging was common, and they were intended to be contact printed on "Printing out Paper", which relies on light to create the image, requiring no development.

As the darker areas of the print are exposed, they inhibit further darkening of the in those areas. This greatly extends the tonality of the dark areas of the print. With modern printing materials, it is very easy to get a harsh result..

Photoshop makes this easy to deal with, using curves. Steepen the quarter tone, and add another point to knock down the three quartertone, and you should see considerable detail retrieved in the shadows.

It’s not unusual to see scans of old images that were printed ignoring this effect, and the results are sadly very harsh, even though the information exists in the original negative.



Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

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