I have some old B&W negatives (35mm film) that I want to convert to positive photos. I can't see any way to do this in iPhoto so I was wondering if Aperture would give me this capability. Any advice please?
Thanks, Keith
The scanner software will actually take care of that even Image Capture will do it.
regards
The scanner software will actually take care of that even Image Capture will do it.
regards
Thank you for your quick response Frank. Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by scanner software. Is that in Aperture? Also, image capture, I'm not familar with that as I've only used iPhoto so far.
I just need to be sure that Aperture will invert negatives before I buy it.
Thanks, Keith
Aren't you going to scan in the negatives? If not how are you getting them onto the system?
If you're scanning them in the software that does the scanning will convert the negatives to positive images.
Image Capture is an application included with OS X which can do scanning as well as camera import and a few other things. My point was that even the built-in software will do the conversion so any scanner software that you might be using should do it also. Of course you could just use Image Capture to do the scan.
regards
Frank, I see what you mean, thank you Yes, I have used Image Capture before with our Epson CX 7800 scanner.
This scanner will give positive images.
But the negatives tend to curl in the holders and I'm never very satisfied with the focus. For this reason I have set up Photosolve's Xtend-a-slide which allows me to photograph the images on my digital camera. These I import into iPhoto, but, of course, they are negatives. I need to then invert them into positives.
Would Aperture allow me to do that?
thanks, Keith
Then you have a bit of a problem, that is not a normal function of Aperture. It's possible by using the curves adjustment to 'flip' an image.
I gather you don't have Aperture yet. You could download the 30 day trail and see what it does for you. Also googleing converting B&W negatives to positives turned up a few ideas. In fact this linkFilm conversion I found on the front page of the Extend-a-slide site. They use the curve adjustment in what looks like PS (didn't read the whole article.)
Anyway if you're only reason for getting Aperture is to do this I'd look hard at other solutions. But if you also want all the other things that Aperture does well (image management comes to mind in your case) it could be worthwhile.
good luck
regards
thank you Frank, that's helpful. I'll continue searching. I appreciate your help.
Best wishes,
Keith
Hello Keith,
since your negatives are Black-and-White, a simple Automator Workflow may suffice to do the ground work of the negative-positive conversion.
Here is a sample run: The negative
The convertes Reasult:
I put the workflow here as a compressed zip file to download http://dreschler-fischer.de/scripts/BWNegative.workflow.zip
Regards
Léonie
P.S. If the quartz composition action should not be available in Automator, you may need to install Xcode from the AppStore.
Thank you very much Leonie. I appreciate all the details, and the example of using the quartz composition filter. Clearly, this does the job I want. Keith
You are welcome, Keith.
My pleasure.
Léonie
Does the quartz B&W filter really convert a negative image to a positive? I would have thought it only did a B&W convert on a color image.
(just notice you did a color invert before the B&W, hmm still seems like somehting is missing)
I would have thought it only did a B&W convert on a color image.
That is exactly what it does.
The Action before that (Quartz Composition Filter) creates the negative: 😉
"Apply Quartz Composition Filter to Image", set the selector to "Color Invert" on the Luminance channel
Cheers
Léonie
P.S. But it is a simple linear inversion, so Keith probably will still have to do some tweaking with the "curves" in Aperture to make it perfect.
Thank you for your interst in this topic, Frank and Leonie. You, and possibly other readers, may be interested to know that I have managed to do what I want using the channel invert filter in Final Cut Express. It involves quite a lot of steps, including taking a screen shot which is of a low quality, but it has given me a positive from my negatives.
The question always is, what's it to be used for?, and in my casse I just need a few old family photos to add to the story I'm writng of my childhood. Let's face it, the originals are not that great, and a fairly low quality final product is adequate to include as small photos in a Pages document.
For higher quality needs, and inverting some of my colour negatives, I will likely have to go to Aperture, along with its other many benefits.
Thanks again, Keith
Hello Keith,
You, and possibly other readers, may be interested to know that I have managed to do what I want using the channel invert filter in Final Cut Express. It involves quite a lot of steps, including taking a screen shot which is of a low quality, but it has given me a positive from my negatives.
Well, that certainly is a very resourceful and ingenious approach! 😎
Great, if it works for you, and thank you for letting us know.
Cheers
Léonie
B&W negatives to positive photos
