Improve old transparencies with Negative Lab Pro

Guides and How-Tos
1

I’ve just tried something.

I’ve inherited a load of transparencies that date back as far as 1950ct. Most of the older transparencies have shifted colours due to age, storage and whatever other causes might exist. I wanted to see if I can use NLP’s internal process to improve the overall appearance of the transparencies.

This is what I did

  • changed orientation and cropped to taste
  • adjusted WB and the RGB tone curve
  • created a virtual copy
  • inverted the RGB tone curve
  • launched NLP

This is what I got:
Left: Source image, Right: After using NLP

test
test1752×878 185 KB

Both images were not customized other than what I listed above.
Further improvements can be made with the HSL and Color Grading tools. Here’s a quick upgrade:

Bildschirmfoto 2020-11-30 um 14.50.56
Bildschirmfoto 2020-11-30 um 14.50.561036×1036 129 KB

Sky: HSL tool was used to change the saturation.
Grass: Color Grading was used.

4 Likes
2

I logged in specifically to see whether NLP would be suitable for processing transparency scans. I’m currently embarking on digitising my late father’s vast archive, which consists of 2/3’s positives, 1/3 negatives. It’s good to know that NLP is a powerful tool for both.

BUT… wouldn’t it be great if it wasn’t necessary to invert the image first? If we could select a “transparency” option?

3

yes, sure, and I think that @nate is already looking into it :vulcan_salute:

4

That’s really good news. Thanks, Digitizer.

5

… beware, I was just guessing…

6

Just wonder if there’s any other information or additional user insights into improving transparencies. I have many to do, and the task is very difficult.