Hi, I’ve been using NLP for my black and white negatives for a while now and really love how easily I can bulk convert several rolls of scanned negatives with relative ease.
Unfortunately, I am limited to just black and white scans because NLP creates the most disgusting vomit green cast to all of my color photos. To make things worse, it seems that the only way I can get rid of this awful tint is by creating a TIF copy and editing the copy as NLP’s in-app sliders don’t seem to make any difference and give me a choice to turn the image from vomit green to beat juice magenta.
I’m taking the white balance sample from the film border as instructed and then cropping the image before running NLP. Not sure what else I’m missing here, thinking I might need to use something different if NLP isn’t built to handle color well.
Negative Lab Pro is really meant fo getting the best colors out of your negatives… You can see a pretty wide sample of the colors users are getting here on the instagram hashtag:
So let’s see if we can figure out what has gone wrong here with this negative…
Can you share more about your digitization setup? The more details the better! For instance, if camera scanning, please share the camera model, lens, and light source model. If using a traditional scanner, please share the scanner model, as well as the software and settings used to capture.
Do you see any errors in Lightroom? A common one to see is “Profile Missing” underneath the camera profile selection. If you see this, then we just need to figure out what profile you need and make sure it gets added.
If camera scanning, were these captured RAW? (Sometimes users accidentally capture as JPG, which will not result in good color.)
Are you 100% sure these were developed correctly? (Especially when self-developing, it’s not uncommon for issues to come from old/bad chemicals or missing steps during development.)
How is the condition of the negatives? If you look at them against a light table, does anything look unusual? How old are they and how have they been stored?
What version of NLP are you on? As of writing this, v2.2 is the latest. The color processing has come a long
If you’d like me to take a look at the original RAW, I can often better diagnose what is going on. You can send the RAW to me at nate@natephotographic.com.
I’m scanning with an EOS RP and a 35mm f1.8 macro and a basic LED light table I got off amazon
I don’t see any profile missing errors and I have already confirmed that the EOS RP NLP profile is present in the appropriate folder.
Yes they were captured RAW using EOS Utility 3 to tether to the camera
They have developed correctly, there are 2 or 3 frames that actually had accurate colors the rest however is another story. I developed using brand new C41 chemicals that came in the mail the same day following the instructions on the kit. I developed 4 separate rolls with the same scanning results.
Negatives look fine against a light table, they were scanned right after drying was completed (about 2 hours)
Version 2.2, completely uninstalled, reinstalled, and reconverted already as a sanity check
I appreciate you looking into it, I’ll send a couple of negatives and see if you can figure out what might be happening.
Hmm… this might be part of the problem, or at least contributing to it. See this article on the best LED Light Tables for Camera Scanning Film Negatives. If you are using a cheap Amazon LED, it probably has a low CRI (Color Rendering Index).
Gotcha. Development is definitely not my speciality! There are a lot of variables and many things can go wrong. I do find generally that users are more likely to have color issues in their conversions if they have done the development themself (instead a lab). Not to say that is the issue here, but just in general!
That would be awesome. I have been working on improvements to the camera profiles that seems to be especially beneficial for Canon cameras, so this will be a good test for that!
The purple color can be removed by placing the film in direct sulight. The UV rays clear the dye. If the Kodak Fixer is Sodium Thiosulfate, extend your fixing time to 10 minutes. If it is Ammonium Thiosulfate, 5.5 should be sufficient, but extend another 2 minutes . Some of the more modern films seem to need a longer fixing time and the two bath method keeps residual complexes from slowing down the process.
Still, it is possible to edit and correct in Negative Lab Pro…
There are still some issues with the edit, but much closer to where it should be. In general, though, you should not need to do as much color correction as I’ve needed to do here. So I’d recommend figuring out what is causing the purple development issues, and fix it at the source. I’d also recommend trying one of recommended light tables, as a cheap light table will only make color worse.
Thank you for investigating this the negative is definitely more purple than anything else. I’ll try extending the blix step to 10 minutes and see if I get better results.
Reporting back, extending the blix phase worked beautifully on some Fuji Superia extra, I feel a bit more confident trying it on Portra next time I’m shooting that.
I’m also trying to scan slightly overexposed too to make up for any lack of light due to using a tracing table instead of one of the more expensive copy boxes or buying an iPad and this seems to be going swimmingly. Also, scanning with the Google Pixel as a light source netted mixed results too so food for thought if someone else is following this and looked into the recommended light sources reference.
