Scanning B&W negatives is a lot easier than you might have thought. You’ll need a decent scanner that has the ability to scan film. Some flatbed scanners are equipped for negative scanning, but a dedicated film scanner is best. I use a Minolta Scan Dual III. It looks like a shoebox with a slot in the front and takes a strip of up to 6 negatives in a plastic holder.
To get the best quality scan from a B&W negative, you must lie to the scanner. You’d think selecting B&W negative from the scanning software menu would be the correct choice. It’s not. Choose B&W positive instead.
When you scan as a negative, the software makes all the adjustments internally and the results are OK, but not optimal. When you scan a negative as a positive, the scanner just scans and you’ll end up with a negative image like the image above when you open your photo editor. That’s OK because it’s easy to turn this into a positive image.
Picture Window Pro (PWP), the editor I use, has a transformation labeled “negative” that will flip your image from negative to positive. The GIMP does the same thing with the invert function. The positive image will be way too light most times. This is because a positive scan is linear and doesn’t adjust the mid-tones or gamma. It’s best this way because you can adjust these tones yourself and get better results.
PWP has a specific tool for adjusting the gamma. I set the input gamma for 1 and adjust to a value between 1.4 and 2.2 depending on the image. I do this by eye, tweaking the values until I’m happy with the tones in the preview window. The screen shot above was taken from Gimp. You adjust the gamma here by moving the middle slider (input values under the histogram) to the right. The initial value is 1.0. You will end up with something in the neighborhood of 0.45. The best way to make the adjustment is to ignore the numbers and rely on your eye. When you are happy with the preview, accept it and go on to the next step.
This is the image adjusted for gamma. The mid-tones look good, but the photo is flat and muddy. It lacks contrast because there are no blacks or whites in the image — yet.
Film has a characteristic “S” curve. The bottom of the curve defines the black or shadows and the top defines the white or highlight tones. When you open the curves function (Brightness Curve in PWP or simply Curves in the Gimp) the muddy image will show a straight line on a 45 degree diagonal. Choose a control point on the curve near the bottom for the shadows and another near the top for the highlights. Pull the bottom point down and the top point up. Again, use your eye to judge when the curve is right. This screen shot from PWP shows the actual “S” curve that produced the image below.
Don’t be afraid to play a bit. It’s how you learn. Now look how the image has come to life because the curve has taken the flat image and given it the contrast all good B&W photos need. If you’ve never used curves in your editor, you’re missing out on a powerful tool that will transform your images. You won’t have to make radical changes in the curve to see dramatic results. Be conservative and play around until you are happy with the image.
Here’s the final version. I cleaned up a few spots using the spot tool and the clone tool in PWP. All good photo editors will have a clone tool. Then I sharpened the image. It didn’t take long at all, maybe 5 or ten minutes total. It’s easy once you get the hang of it.
My explanation of mid-tones and gamma is oversimplified, but that’s deliberate. You don’t need to worry about terms and numbers when you know how to tweak your B&W images. Use your eye and judgment and play. You’ll get great results in no time.
PS – I’ve added another, follow up tutorial “How to Scan B&W Negatives: 16 bit Linear” that gives you another good option for scanning B&W.
This is great information. I’ve never tried to scan B&W negatives but now I’m tempted.
For me, scanning B&W negs is a necessity. I work almost exclusively with B&W film these days and have hundreds of B&W negs I’ve accumulated over the years.
It took me awhile to finally figure out a good work flow. re-scanned a few old negatives the other day and got much better results than I got from the original attempts a year or so ago. I spent hours trying to get decent images and was never completely satisfied.
When I re-scanned, the images were far superior and it only took minutes instead of hours.
Once you know how to do it, scanning B&W negs is lots easier than color.
Glad I helped.
I love how we can tweak old photos to look almost new again. 🙂
One of the first things I did when I first got PWP was to scan a B&W print on a flatbed scanner. It was taken on Easter Sunday in 1957, a photo of my wife as a 6 year old with she and her girlfriends in their Easter outfits. Turned out great and now we have the digital version.
B&W negatives are a different story altogether. If they are processed and stored correctly (not difficult), they will look as good in 50 years (or more) as they did when they came out of the developer.
The photo I used to illustrate this article is only a few years old. It’s Megan, my oldest granddaughter. She’s 12 now.
Beautiful pic! Thanks for the tips, Di
[…] of the camera — no cropping at all. You might want to have a look at my recent post, “How to Scan B&W Negatives: An Introduction.” The illustrated article (the example photo was shot with my Stylus) describes my work […]
John, I have used Curves in Adobe Photoshop. It is indeed a magnificent tool. I just have to be careful not to overdo it. 🙂
Yes Mary. You don’t ever want to overdo curves. I read a tutorial a few years ago that turned the light bulbs on in my brain. Once I understood that I could use curves to replicate the characteristic curve of the film (or close to it), my B&W images took on a new life.
The reason scanning as a positive works so well is that the scanning software doesn’t mess with the image, it only scans. Most scanning software is set up to scan color positives and color negatives. Black and white is an afterthought I suppose.
The real trick with scanning is to get all the information you can from the negative in as pure a form as possible. Then, once you understand which tools to use, the rest is much easier and you are the one in control.
I never used photoshop. Couldn’t afford it but I discovered Picture Window Pro years ago. It’s written by a photographer for photographers and it’s a powerful program.
It’s the creation of Jonathan Sachs, co-founder of the Lotus Development Corporation and author of Lotus 1-2-3. Pretty good credentials I’d say. And the best part is the full pro version is only $89.95. You get to try before you buy too.
[…] I said in an earlier tutorial, lie to your scanner and tell it you’re scanning a positive. I’ve found this to be the […]
Great post this will really help me.
[…] 2, 2009 by awarewriter In my first tutorial, “How to Scan B&W Negatives: An Introduction,” I outlined the process I used to scan a B&W negative as a positive and explained how I […]
What an epiphany. I’ve lied to my scanner (and my camera) before, but I never told this particular lie. I’m not sure I could get away with it with the HP though, since the selection of slide/negative/print is directly related to how the feed slot operates. But it’s worth trying for sure!
Is the Minolta model you mentioned still on the market, or did it go the way of most things Minolta when they sold their digital photography concerns to Sony?
I was just looking at boxes in more plurals than I care to think, of my fathers and grandfathers B&W negatives and wondering how I was ever going to begin the task. Then here was this exactly what I needed, not only a great product recommendation but a way to start.
Hi Val, I wrote this article two years ago and have learned much since then. Please feel free to email me if you need help.
[…] How to Scan B&W Negatives: An Introduction […]