Color adjust film scans
a step-by-step walkthrough
Firstly, I like to work on the overall contrast and lighting of the image.
Step 1
Bring the black and white points closer towards the center, you’d get a deeper and stronger contrast.
Personally, I do most of my edits in curves.
I also like to apply a little bit of a S-curve to further saturate the deepen the colors without effecting the midtone/skintone.
Step 2
This is where the blue curve becomes useful.
Subtly adjust the blue curve to remove yellow in the image.
P.S. I do like a little bit of yellow highlights for warmth, but not so much in the midtone, because it affects on the skintone.
Step 3
To get rid of the slight green cast on Connie’s face, I lowered the green midtown justttt a touch below the center.
Did you notice the difference in the pink tone on her skin?
before minor adjustments
after minor adjustments
RESULT:
This is just my personal preference on how I like to color correct my film scans. I choose to work with flat scans, which means that they might not look dynamic to your eyes, but they pack the highest range of color and contrast to play around in the editing process. Think of them as RAW files from digital cameras.
That being said, if your labs usually deliver solid contrasty and saturated scans straight away, I do not recommend adjusting too much from them, because our eyes are not as well-trained as the lab technicians, and sometimes we can get overboard on editing our film photos, at the end we forget the film qualities in them.
The scan of this portrait of Connie is done by picturehouse+thesmalldarkroom in New York City. Their 20mb TIFF file gives me enough room to play in the edits. When I do choose to print this photograph in the darkroom, I’d use this digital edit as a guideline.
Overall, I hope that you pick up some useful tips from this step-by-step breakdown, and feel free to apply them accordingly to your editing process.
🤓🙏
(thanks for being nerdy together)