[Leica] Process and scan to disc question

[Richard Man]

Gerry, there are two aspects of B&W scanning that you need to consider:

1) scan as negative or positive. Some people scan as "B&W neg" and some
people scan as "(RGB) positive" then invert in Photoshop or the like. Some
people claim that certain scanning software ALWAYS clip if you scan as B&W
neg (I believe NikonScan is one of them) so option 2) gives more fully
tonal result.

2) Save as Raw/DNG or TIFF/JPG. Note that TIFF is "full quality" where JPG
is compressed, but otherwise they are the same in this discussion.
Certainly, always save as TIFF rather than JPG as you want the highest
quality.

If you save as TIFF/JPG, then usually you have the scanner software
applying some tone curves and such, so that the image looks pretty good
already, then it's minor way in LR/PSD to get to the final image. In this
regard, it's rather like having a digital camera saving the images as JPG.

If you save as Raw/DNG, then the scanner software will try to maintain as
much information as possible, e.g. minimal tone curves and exposure
adjustments, so that it can be processed further post-scan. The downside is
that it takes a bit more work in LR/PSD to get to the final result. The
upside is that if you improve your LR/PSD skills or if better processing
software are to become available, then you can go back to the original
Raw/DNG file and redo it.

***
Personally, right now I scan as B&W neg or save in TIFF format. With medium
format /4x5 (I rarely shoot 35mm film any more), there is so much
information from those scans that I do not think it's worthwhile to use the
other options.

YMMV.



On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 11:48 PM, Gerry Walden <gerry.walden at icloud.com>
wrote:

> A number (Peter, Lluis etc) have mentioned scanning b&w as either .tiff or
> even .dng. I cannot see any obvious advantage to this, so could somebody
> pease enlighten me. I tried a couple to .dng which was a pain in Lightroom
> as they came out as negatives and the sliders worked the wrong way. I am
> currently scanning as .tiff but (to be honest) don’t really know why.
> Thanks!
>
> Gerry
>
>
> Gerry Walden LRPS
> www.gwpics.com
> +44 (0)23 8046 3076 or
> +44 (0)797 287 7932
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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