not necessarily ...

[nearlycomplete]

a digital photo question, but i think you're some of the better folks to ask

I'm trying to scan my film negatives onto my macbook, and when i throw them into photoshop, inverting them doesn't create a usable photo. I've tried playing with the levels to no success. Anyone have some tips?

 

[rusty2192]

Sorry, I can't help you with your problem, but I bet if you changed your title to something mote descriptive of the problem you would attract a lot more people that could. Some like "help inverting scans of negatives" or similar. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people in this forum and I am confident somebody here knows the answer.

Oh, and it absolutely fits in here. The negatives are now digital aren't they? pretty much anything photography related is ok here, whether digital or not.

 

[johnnj]

How are you scanning them? What equipment are you using?

Going back more than 10 years all of the drivers/interfaces for both dedicated film and flatbed scanners did the negative inversion automatically.

 

[snberk103]

The straight "inversion" won't help much in PS. All it's doing is reversing the colours, which only works if the film base is clear. Negative film has a red film base, which overlays all of the other colours in a neg. You have to get rid of the red first.

If you have a blank frame scanned, inverse that - then try to clear the red. Once you have that, save it as a layer or something, and then you can use it clear the red film base. I've never done this, so this is just me thinking out loud. But it should help you track down the right process. Just be aware that each different kind of film has a different red base. So once you have Kodak NC160 (for example) done you will need to do it again for Fuji.

There may be plug-ins already for PS. Try looking there first.

Or - you can scan again and let the scanner do the inversion. It will be able to do a pretty good job clearing the film base right from the start.

Good Luck.