The Perfect Digital Original

Now that we have our digital negative (see Perfect BW Scan), we need to transform that into a Perfect Digital Original, fit for digital processing and printing.

We are going to invert the negative, adjust the basic grey levels, spot re-touch the dust and hairs and sharpen the image.

When all that is done, we have a good Digital Original that we can process like we would any digital image.

Software

I use Adobe Photoshop for this specific digital process. You will see that we need very specific tools that are not (yet) available in other products, or if they are, they do not perform exactly the way I want them to.

You will be able to perform the same or similar steps in other software. I tried other applications like Phase One Capture One Pro (my preferred tool for raw processing), Affinity Photo and others. Some come close, but not close enough for me.

The Process

The whole process from digital negative to digital original involves a lot of steps. It takes some time, and I suggest that you only give the full treatment to negatives that are potentially good enough to merit printing them.

Having said that, Photoshop allows you to record actions and execute these actions later and that saves a lot of time. I will mention what actions I recorded where appropriate.

So, open your Digital Negative in Photoshop.

Crop

This may sound strange, but I start with the cropping.

That is mainly because I recorded a lot of the next steps into one action.

I prefer to leave a little edge around the negative, as visible on the top of the above screenshot.

By the way, when scanning, make sure you don't cover the actual picture with your tape.

Reverse the negative

This is simple, just go to Image > Adjustments > Invert.

Convert the color profile to ProPhotoRGB (or your preferred profile).

Mis-en-place

Let's prepare the kitchen and setup everything. Prepare your ingredients, so to speak.

First, convert the layer into a Smart Object.

Next, create a Group, name it whatever you like (I called it Tone) and add two adjustment layers, Levels and Curves.

While your at it, also create a new Layer (I called it Fix) that will be used for the spot re-touching later.

And to be on the safe side, save your document as a .psd file.

You could leave it a .tif if you want, PhotoShop can us layered tifs, but I prefer to have all my layered documents in the .psd format, so I know what is layered and what is not.

I created one action for all the above steps: Just start with a fresh negative and record your steps.

Tone scale

You will notice that the inverse scan looks very pale.

You can use the Levels or Curves adjustment layer to reduce the histogram, so that we end up with the full tone scale that we want to use.

I prefer to begin with the Levels.

Let's start with the blacks.

Pick the black triangle on the left (above the 0) and move it to the right, while holding down the ALT key. Your picture should become white. As soon as black spots start to appear, stop dragging. Adjust until you 'just' don't see the black spots.

You now have an image with just enough black to work with later.

Do the same with the whites, by dragging the white triangle (above the 255) to the left, while holding down the ALT key. Now, look for the white spots etc.

Your image should be looking a little better now. You can adjust the middle triangle a little to get the basic middle grey about right, just drag it until the picture looks best. It probably will not get perfect, aim for 'best'.

You can use the Curves adjustment layer to create an S-Curve. Don't over-do it, just a little. We will make the final adjustment later.

Why an S-Curve?

Film is intended to be printed on Silver paper, and that reacts to light in a very specific way. Film is calibrated to be used on these papers, and will look 'flat' if the S-Curve is not applied. How much S-Curve? That depends on your film-development process, which is a skill and an art in itself, not easy to give exact figures. Just try it.

Another option would be to scale the blacks and the whites using the Curves adjustment layer, exactly the same way as you would while using the Levels.

Then adjust the grey level using the Levels and finish with the S-Curve on the Curves adjustment layer.

And if you are really good with curves, you can do it all using the Curves adjustment layer.

The advantage of using the Curves layer for all these adjustments is that it is a little easier to get the Curves right when the max black and white are also defined in the same place.

Spot re-touching

By now, you will probably have noticed a fair amount of white spots and maybe even some hairs on your image. This is the dust that was scanned together with your negative.

All film print processes involve spot re-touching. In a traditional Silver print workflow, the spotting is done at the end, on a dried print. On every dried print ....

In digital, you only have to do the spotting once. Great!

So, select the "Fix" layer.

Zoom the image to a 100% view.

Select the Spot Healing Brush.

Make sure the Brush setting has "Content-Aware" and "Sample All Layers" selected.

This will sample the layer below the "Fix" layer, the one that contains the original image.

Now, start removing all white spots, hairs and other imperfections. Stay at 100% magnification, move the screen over the image until you have done every square centimere. This takes a while.

You will discover that spotting is both a skill and an art. Especially hairs can be very tricky to remove, sometimes it is necessary to switch to the Patch tool or the Healing Brush.

If you have a lot of dust, you could consider to delete this image and re-do the original scan. This is where the clean scanning pays off.

You wil also discover that you want to use a tablet and a pen, not a mouse.

Why do this spot re-touching on a separate layer and not on the image layer?

The spot re-touching is by far the most time-consuming part of the process and it is just a wise precaution to do it on a separate layer.

If you make a mistake, the image is not impacted. For very difficult parts, you could even consider creating another "Fix" layer, and do that part there, not affecting your other spotting.

You will probably find your scan to look worryingly unsharp. Don't worry. You are at 100% magnification and this is NOT a digital original. It's an entire different medium, don't compare the two. Only judge a film photograph at it's final magnification or, preferably, in print. Film is designed to be printed, not to be judged on a screen.

Are the white hairs and dust particles sharp? Then your scan is sharp.

Finishing the image  

OK, the hard part is done.

You have a clean image that looks about right.

Time for the next step.

Create a new Smart Object

Select all layers and convert the selection to a Smart Object.

This will take a little while, depending on your computing power.

All your previous layers have now disappeared and are replaced by one Smart Object layer, a new 'original image'.

But don't dispair. If you double click the Smart Object, your original with the adjustment and fix layers re-appears. You can always go back, even add additional adjustments and save them. Your adjustments will be embedded in your new Smart Object. Especially useful if you find that you need to do additional spot re-touching.

Next, add a Group (I called it Atmosphere) and add three adjustment layers, Levels, Curves and Brightness/Contrast.

We don't use that group yet, but this is where we will do the final adjustments.

Sharpening

If you have your doubts about the right way to sharpen an image, look here.

Having said that, let's sharpen the image the right way:

Smart Sharpen

Select the Smart Object layer and select Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen ...

I prefer a value of 75 or 100.

Unsharp Mask

Do NOT use Unsharp Mask.

Unsharp Mask will increase the Grain structure to much and can easily deteriorate your image. This is one of the reasons that I minimise the use of scanning software for my scan. Unsharp Mask is ugly.

Smart Sharpen is enough sharpening.

Action

All this sounds like a lot of work, but once you have figured it out, all these steps can be recorded into one single action. You can then create the Smart Object, create your adjustment layers and apply the sharpening in one single click.

The Final Touch

Now we have a good Digital Original from out film negative. The specific film part is now done and all that rests is 'normal' digital image processing.

Remember the Atmosphere Group we created earlier, with the adjustment layers?
Now I would use those to finish the photograph and probably add some masks and local adjustments where needed.