Arnaud Lemorillon

HowToScanBWFilms

How To Scan BW Films

1) NEG MONO (film type declaration)

Negatives that are sometimes denser and/or harder may offer a better rendering when scanned as color negatives.
And in certain cases, we can also, with very underexposed and/or underdeveloped negatives, recover a little material by declaring the film as positive.

2) 16 BIT / 4000 DPI / GRAY LEVEL

3) START PREVIEW >> CROPPING and ROTATION

4) HISTOGRAM >> black point (at the edge of the graph) / gray point / white point

If the histogram protrudes to the right or to the left, the overall exposure of the scan is poor.

5) ANALOG GAIN (allows you to physically modulate the light intensity of the LED source during scanning)

A negative (-) analog gain adjustment will reduce the brightness of the source and shift the histogram to the left.
The image is then denser and we can thus compensate for the “burnt” highlights.
Conversely, a positive setting (+) will slide the histogram towards the highlights and uncover the buried shadows.

6) CURVE (Contrast Management) >> slightly S-shaped

7) BLUR MASK (Emphasis) - If Needed

An intensity level of 60 points, a width of 1 Pixel with a threshold of 15 points is a starting point for a 400 ISO film

8) START SCANNING

9) SAVE THE FILE AS .TIFF

10) Dust Retouching in PHOTOSHOP

To make this go unnoticed, it is better to use a tool with sharp edges on a layer

11) SAVE THE FILE AS .TIFF / ICC Profile: Gray Gamma 2.2

12) SET IMAGE SIZE AND OUTPUT DPI

(depending on use: 300 DPI for printing and 72 DPI for the web)
then convert the file to RGB / 8 BIT / .JPG (without compression)