Scanning negatives... anybody ever done it?

Hi,

I am currently working on a book that will require many photographs. I am obtaining scans of photographs from an archive. Some of the images I would like to use are negatives that have not been printed.

I can get a scan for $1.00, but to develop photographs it will cost $5.00 per photo.

Question:: Without a piece of equipment made especially for scanning negatives, can you scan a negative and then use Adobe photoshop or something and just convert the image to a postive??

Thanks for any, and I mean any input.

 

You should be able to have them scan all of the negatives that you need and then save them on a disk or something for you, or email them to you... depending on what type of service you are using.
Part of the $1 fee should include then turning the negative into a positive, and saving the resulting image. ask them though.

If you are creating a book, you wouldn't need to take the extra step of having photos printed and then scanning those pics again to place in your book.

If for some reason they scan the negatives and the files they give you are still negative (very unlikely) here is a tutorial for turning a negative into a positive. http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_6_1.htm

 

I used to scan negs on a daily basis. The scanner's software would work like a plug-in to photoshop (file --> import). This would bring up a window where we could select whether we were scanning a negative or positive transparency and whether we wanted to produce a positive or negative (along with other settings... such as DPI).

From there the scanned image would show right up in photoshop and we could save this file anyway we wanted. Years ago... we would save our images as CMYK's for printing purposes.

I still have a professional Nikon film scanner (somewhere around here) if you want some help with this project and maybe save a few dollars. (I am in Pennsylvania).

 

Wow, thanks to the both of you. Rep points added.

I visited the archive today and we tried scanning a negative and inverting and it worked! The publisher I'm working with says to just send the scans to them and they will clean them up. I appreciate your taking the time out to assist!

 

Just make sure you scan them at the highest resolution you have available to you. Control-i(invert) is indeed the best way of doing it I know

One thing I'd like to point out is the easiest way to adjust the image is with the levels tool.

Well, I can only wonder what you might be scanning, both of my sisters have had jobs archiving material for museums, sounds very interetsting to me, I hope you enjoy it

best of luck, innovati!