I shoot exclusively B&W film, lab-processed and scanned on a Noritsu. Because I don't control development contrast and lab scans tend to come back a bit flat, I’ve been building a Lightroom workflow specifically for editing the converted JPEGs I receive from the lab.
Right now, I'm using a base import preset as follows:
The plan is to pair this base with a set of modular "contrast grade" S-curve presets (similar to darkroom Multigrade filters).
Does anyone else run a similar workflow for BW lab scans? What key adjustments or preset stacks do you rely on to bring out the best in your scans? Are there any good presets available for this use case?
Before I started developing and scanning my B&W films myself, my lab scanned them with a Noritsu.
I use Capture One, not Lightroom, but my basic procedure was to first apply auto-levels, which improved everything immediately, including contrast; I sometimes brought in the black point a little more to taste.
After that everything was image-specific, typically applying a bit of selective midtone detail/clarity, selective dodging and burning, selective shadow recovery (I've found highlight recovery is pretty much useless in film scans, the results never look good to me), and then lots of dust and hair spotting. I never sharpened or dehazed.
I now scan my own films (35mm with a Plustek; 120 with an Epson V600) and my scans generally look better than anything I ever got from the lab. I scan them flat using the same settings for every B&W film (no adjustments at the scanning stage), and apply the same routine that I did to the Noritsu scans, although I often increase contrast in addition to setting levels. For images with a lot of sky, I often apply contrast selectively as I think clouds look better with less contrast, so instead of increasing contrast globally I add it selectively to areas that could use it.
Leickor wrote:
I shoot exclusively B&W film, lab-processed and scanned on a Noritsu. Because I don't control development contrast and lab scans tend to come back a bit flat, I’ve been building a Lightroom workflow specifically for editing the converted JPEGs I receive from the lab.
Right now, I'm using a base import preset as follows:
The plan is to pair this base with a set of modular "contrast grade" S-curve presets (similar to darkroom Multigrade filters).
Does anyone else run a similar workflow for BW lab scans? What key adjustments or preset stacks do you rely on to bring out the best in your scans? Are there any good presets available for this use case?...Show more →
Black point, white point, gray point are the big ones. Curves and gray point would be next, the details depend on the scene, light, ... .
But really, stop editing jpgs, and buy a used V850 or similar, so you can scan/edit tiffs.
theHUN wrote:
But really, stop editing jpgs, and buy a used V850 or similar, so you can scan/edit tiffs.
Have you actually found a difference? I tried with 20-25 images, high-res TIFF and JPEG, some B&W and some colour films, and never was able to get anything more out of the TIFFs than I could from the JPEGs. But I don't do very heavy editing or extreme colour changes (mainly just changes in saturation and occasionally hue, white balance changes on colour film, etc).
bjhurley wrote:
Have you actually found a difference? I tried with 20-25 images, high-res TIFF and JPEG, some B&W and some colour films, and never was able to get anything more out of the TIFFs than I could from the JPEGs. But I don't do very heavy editing or extreme colour changes (mainly just changes in saturation and occasionally hue, white balance changes on colour film, etc).
The key qualifier was "flat". If the black/white points are appropriate then a jpg might suffice. But a flat jpg will not survive level/curve adjustments.
theHUN wrote:
The key qualifier was "flat". If the black/white points are appropriate then a jpg might suffice. But a flat jpg will not survive level/curve adjustments.
Mine always do, but I export my JPEGs from TIFFs for editing. I make flat scans and save them as TIFFs for archiving and edit the exported JPEGs. I've never seen any artifacts. I don't think I've ever seen any artifacts from lab JPEGs either, which are usually lower-res than the ones I export from my TIFFs.
The key challenge with the lab has been to get them to expose properly during scanning, especially for back-lit shots where you believe yourself to have done an ok job with metering!
