It can seem difficult to capture the natural colors when scanning film negatives. The film brand, the production batch, storage and the light conditions when photographing will give each film (and even individual frames) a unique color signature.
Most scanner software (like SilverFast and VueScan) have predefined profile settings for many common film brands. Unfortunately, the predefined settings will not match the film you are scanning, due the reasons outlined above.
A step-by-step color correction guide for Negative Film scanning.
The SilverFast scanner software is used in this guide.Perform a Prescan
Select Film type and Exposure in SilverFast, click "Auto" and "CCR":
Click the "Image Auto Adjust" button:
Make only minor adjustments to Brightness, Contrast and Saturation to avoid loosing dynamic range:
If the colors still does not feel right, click the Color Histogram button:
For each of the color channels (the black, red, green and blue buttons):
Carefully adjust the left- and right-most arrow symbol until they reach the first slope on their end of the histogram curve.
Then carefully make minor adjustment using the middle arrow.
Look at the prescanned image while you are doing this and notice the effect of the adjustments on each color channel. Notice how the red button adjusts Cyan/Red, green button Magenta/Green and the blue button Yellow/Blue.
Try the color histogram adjustments several times, you will soon get the hang of it.
Remember that you potentially carry the best tools yourself, your eyes should be the final judge!
SilverFast will remember your settings for the next frame, and this is normally what you want as the color profile in sequential frames often is very similar.
Color Histogram adjustments can also be done after scanning in programs like Photoshop or PaintShop Pro. It is however very handy to make basic color correction when scanning as it is much faster than postprocessing.
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