Black & White Negative Restoration
Each One of Your Black & White Negatives Need Restoration (but you most likely didn’t know that!)
Scanning black & white negative film is by far the most challenging exercise
we face. Most likely, black and whites are probably the oldest negatives you
have. In addition, they probably haven’t been stored correctly and they are
aging literally by the minute. This also means they may be the most valuable
negatives you possess. We find that most of the black & white negatives we
receive have many more scratches than color film. While these scratches on
the negative are not visible to the naked eye, you will find plenty of scratches
in the high resolution scanned image. Also, in negative scanning,
dust particles show up more visibly on a black/grey background then in a color
image. This is important because the latest automated image correction software
such as Kodak’s Digital ICE can’t manipulate black and white negatives. Therefore,
manual photo restoration using a tool such as Adobe Photoshop
is essential to get a quality black and white scan. Every scanning company
in the industry charges very high prices for black and white negatives – ScanCafe
charges just 79 cents per image.
Manual Scratch & dust Removal at ScanCafe is FREE - No other scanning service offers this.
Kodak’s ground breaking Digital ICE dust and scratch detection and removal software does not work with black and white negatives because the infrared light that detects dust and scratches is not compatible with the silver grains on black and white negatives. You don’t have this problem with regular color negative scanning and slide scanning.
Scanning black and white negatives with ICE will make the digital image look “silvery” and out of focus. The only way out is to disable ICE and manually restore the black and white scan using tools such as: clone stamping or healing brush too in Adobe Photoshop. Using clone stamping however requires practice. Therefore, if you have black and white photos, photo scanning might be a simpler scanning option.
Black and White Negative Scanners
Regarding scanner settings, if you're scanning B&W negative film, check if the film looks gray or orange. If it looks gray (typical B&W negative film), choose the “input media” as B&W negative. If the negative looks orange, choose the “input media” as Color negative. This will work most of the time. In some B&W negatives you might get dark regions that look like shadows. This occurs because the B&W negatives have a small density range, typically less than 2.0. Scanners attempt to spread this range over the 256 levels, but are really set up to handle the 3.0 to 4.0 density range of transparencies/slides. The result is that the scan has poor separation in the shadows and poor gradation. One way to solve this problem is to scan the negative as a transparency (not as a negative). The scanner will now spread the histogram values better and provide more control in Adobe Photoshop.