Any Raw software for converting digitised colour negatives?

[tribal-warrior]

In the past, I have photographed some B&W film negatives with a Panasonic M4/3 camera and a macro lens and the results turned out quite good. I used a tablet behind the negatives as a light source. I have not tried the same thing with colour negatives but I do know that is it considerably more challenging with that orange mask and trying to get the colours right. Would there be any Raw processing software that would have the invert feature and all the necessary colour adjustments available for this kind of work? The reason why I'm attracted to using a Raw processor for this is because I could tweak the colours quite significantly and get no quality loss with Raw files. And the usual Raw features like adjusting sharpness and contrast would be good too.

I hope there is something like this that exists as freeware. Also - software that is basic to use and not super complicated would be favourable too as I haven't done any colour correction of negs before. For example, I would have no clue how to deal with that orange mask that negatives have.

 

[Will Deleon]

I recommend looking in Negative Lab Pro. I’ve been using it for about 2 yrs with great results . There is a trial version and works as a plug-in on Lightroom Classic. The full version is about $100usd.

 

[tribal-warrior]

Thank you for the recommendation. Would Negative Lab Pro work as a plug-in with older versions of Lightroom like version 5 for example?

 

[Will Deleon]

Thank you for the recommendation. Would Negative Lab Pro work as a plug-in with older versions of Lightroom like version 5 for example?

This is what it says on their site:

"Lightroom Classic or Lightroom 6 (historic) must be installed prior to running the installer."

 

[Godfrey]

I've had some experience scanning color negs and doing the inversion with mask removal by hand. It's not fun, but it's not that hard. I've also used dedicated scanning solutions like VueScan with flat bed and negative scanners, which do an excellent job once you've learned them.

Negative Lab Pro seems the more sensible solution to this workflow if you want to use copy-camera and raw files. I've only tested it in trial and found it did the job very well ... I've not bought it (yet) because I don't really scan much in color negatives.

G

 

[Alan]

Free for Capture One (Mac):
Analogue Toolbox