I discovered this post on the Epson scanner mail group this morning and
thought some of you might find it useful.
"Here is a workflow for scanning color negatives that has been suggested
on the drum scanner group and works very well. Scan the negative as a
positive (not inverting), and select an area that includes the blank
area at the edge of the film (which has the orange mask). Don't let the
scanner adjust any levels or correct the color; just have the scanner
driver run the motor and lamp of the scanner without any processing
whatsoever, except resolution and bit depth. Open the photo in
Photoshop, select the eyedropper tool and sample the blank (orange mask)
area. Then go to layers/new fill layer and select solid color. In the
mode dialog box select difference. (This will serve to invert the image
and cancel out the orange mask). Now flatten the layer and set the
levels. This is done by going to curves (command-M on a mac) bringing up
the dialog box. Where it says RGB, select one color at a time and move
the slider while holding down the command and option keys
(on a mac, for PC its the two keys just left of the shift bar). Once the
levels are set you are pretty close to having good color, one easy way
to fine-tune the result is to open the curves adjustment again and use
the grey eyedropper and select a part of the image that should be grey.
At this point the result will be overly saturated, I usually reduce
saturation by -40. This is the best way that I know to get a publication
quality result of a negative scan. "
Chuck Norcutt
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