Inverting Kodak color negatives

Mike Groshans

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Anybody have experience reversing color negatives. I bought a slide duplicator to digitze negatives and discovered that inverting the image is not so simple. Film has an orange cast that must first be eliminated. I have tried a couple inverters/plug-ins i found on the internet with poor results. Any recommendations that would work without a lot of manual color tweaking?
 
I use a scanner (Epson) which automatically inverts color negatives and does a beautiful job, so I've never tried to do it otherwise.

If you post a sample, I have a white-point plug-in which I can try. Basically, I would do the inversion in my image editor and then use white-point to get rid of the orange mask. If it works as a one-click color correction, you may want to try it.

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Darrell
 
I tried all the tricks I could think of and couldn't get an inversion with decent color quality. My white-point plug-in couldn't handle it and when I tried many different color adjustments the image quality deteriorated.

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Darrell
 
On an iMac, I tried Graphic Converter, which has several settings at Picture/Invert.

The Normal setting gave the best result, although still with a blue cast overall. So using Effect/White correction, and focussing on one of the flowers on the bush in the centre left, the clouds were clearly separated as white against the blue sky, the grass and shrubs on the bank gained a passable green, but the road, pavement wall, subject's face, and castle tower still retained a bluish tinge., resembling old hand coloured monochrome photos.

Further attempts at adjustment kept resulting in a number of small, features, which were previously hardly visible (such as handrails (?) on sloping paths running diagonally through the shrubbery across the bank, and minor facial features on the subject) becoming highlighted by a limited number of pixels in those locations which changed to bright red.
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Cyril
 
Mike, I think that my experience with Graphic Converter may have been due to the image developing a number of false artifacts among the pixels when downsized for posting on the forum.

Would I be right in thinking that you took the image at 8MP and then downsized in order to post, or was the posted picture a small 1024 x 768 portion of a larger image? On the image I have downloaded the subject's face is less than 20 pixels across, which gives insufficient resolution for the gradual change of detail required to provide a realistic image.

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Cyril
 
I took it at 8mp and posted it that way. if it is less now, i have no idea how it happened. i have also run into weird colored artifacts showing up when trying to eliminate the orange color cast in elements.
 
i have also run into weird colored
artifacts showing up when trying to eliminate the orange color cast
in elements.
That is what surprised me when I was working on your sample. Some very strange color spots showed up.

I know you've just invested in the film scanner, but the best alternative I can think of is to take your important negatives to a photo shop and ask them to given you high quality files on a CD.

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Darrell
 

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