Tools
Negative Lab Pro v3.0.2
Sony A7R5, Sony FE 2.8/50 Macro lens, 4X5 Light Source Pro.
I am curious about color grain I am getting in some of these negative scans, and how y’all are handling it? I am using the latest Lightroom Classic, and the ARQ files created from the 4 shot pixel shift from the Sony A7R 5 don’t allow for Lightroom’s new fancy Denoise feature. I have done my best with playing with the sliders in the Lightroom Noise Reduction arena but I still don’t seem to get that great of a response. Maybe that’s just how these should be, but I’ll never know until I ask!!
Here’s a link to the ARQ file. You should be able to open this without issue in the latest Lightroom Classic.
Aside: Roll analysis has been incredibly useful scanning these old negatives from the early 90s.
Had a look at your ARQ file and found it to be grainy in a way as to prevent complete denoising. Cranking up colour noise suppression made the grain less obnoxious, but that’s it.
Have you tried with an original file instead of the combined shots?
Maybe the results will be less grainy because of features that are unavailable with ARQ files?
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Thank you for taking the time to look at this .ARQ file Digitizer.
The Denoise feature in Lightroom Classic isn’t available on the .ARW individual files either. At least it wasn’t the last time I checked because I remember having that same thought. I’ll double check.
I was using the 4 shot pixel shift images to get around the bayer filter.
Yes, but considering the de-bayering is a fairly well understood mechanism, the features and solutions available for bayer files might provide better results than the absence of such features for supposedly better combo files.
Supposing that you took the scans at base iso, we must also consider that the “noise” might be film grain and then, its removal would be falsifying -i if we care for such values.
Anyways, you might try to get closer to the negative - if your lens goes to 1:1, and get an extension ring if it doesn’t. You can still take several non-shifted shots and combine these for better noise suppression, as astrophotographers usually do. Random noise can be reduced by averaging several takes. Everything that remains unchanged is part of the take…
Had another look at the file in Photoshop and tried to find out what the original film was. It looks like a high iso film from about 30plus years ago. I’d not try to remove the luminance noise, but the nasty chroma noise can be removed without destroying the “historic” feel of the photo.
Note: I’ts a good idea to cover the excess backlight while scanning to get a less hazy starting point.
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