Kim B.Christensen wrote:
Hi -
Sorry, but i have a really newbie question.
I run a GIMP 2.2.8 on a Mandriva 2006 box. And i just aquired a old flatbed
scanner, able to scan 24x36 negatives - of wich i have several thousands....
When i scan a negative, it of course comes out, well, negative.
I can invert the pic with Layer/Colour/invert, but due to the colour mask in
the negative, the result has a severe blue taint, and strongly reduced
contrast.
Can i somehow give the image a 'preset' filter or colour mask, to
counterbalance the orange filter? Or is there any other 'fix' to this
problem?
Any help to a quivering n00b will be deeply appreciated...
Have fun -
At the risk of suggesting a non FOSS solution, check out vuescan. It's
on par with, if not better than the s/w bundled with most
non-professional scanners. It runs on linux, you can download a trial
copy to see if you like it and if it's compatible with your scanner. I
scanned many hundreds of b&w/color photos/negs and slides as part of a
family history project and it worked great.
A hint or two if I might. Be a tough editor. Only after you drop all
but the ones you really, really want, should you go back and fix (and
trust me you'll be doing lots of fixing). There are lots of tricks to
neg and slide restoration. The one killer is fungus. It attacks the
emulsion layers. If these are family photos, don't go cross-eyed dust
spotting uncle Bob's lodge jacket or fixing somebodies smile. People
are looking for faces and places.
Try to group the color slides and negs from the same time period and
film stock type when you do the scans. Chances are that the dyes
degraded at roughly the same rates, and you'll be able to use the same
correction settings on many images which will speed things up quite a bit.
Do your best to calibrate your monitor. Go to
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html and read his info.
If you're using a LCD style monitor, set up so that you look directly at
the screen with no tilt in either axis.
