Lightroom and film scans

Do you use Lightroom to manage film scans? I know it does a fine job processing the camera RAW files but unless I miss my guess the image shown is the imbedded JPG within the RAW file, which is one reason the programs work so quickly. Scanned film has no imbedded jpg and the file size is usually quite large making the processing very slow, particularly if adjustments are being made to the image. Do you manage your film images digitally and if so...how?

— Charles Maclauchlan

Yes, film scans work just fine in Lightroom. I have about 5,000 negative scans that I manage in Lightroom exactly the same as my RAW digital files. The scans are all PSD or TIF digital image files scanned on my Epson V700, all scanned or saved in either grayscale or RGB mode, and function just the same as any other image file. For obvious reasons, the images are all tonally reversed in the scanning process so they are "positives" rather than "negatives."

Lightroom makes its own preview image which it stores in its internal database. The size of these preview scans can be determined, discarded, or generated (or re-generated) by you as you need them. Typically, these preview images are automatically generated by Lightroom when you import the file into its database.

The only limitation I've run up against so far is that Lightroom cannot import or manage duotones or CMYK images — but your negative scans are not likely to be either of these specialized formats.

Comments

[James Bullard]

I use the duotone mode to create toned B&Ws but I am printing on an inkjet printer so I don't actually need the separate ink settings for printing as you might on a press. Unless you are printing them on a press or have need to revisit the duotone settings you can convert them to RGB after getting the look you want and retain the same tonal appearance but Lightroom will then recognize the image.

[richardplondon]

There may be no need to convert to RGB if you are outputting directly from Lightroom. I agree, it doesn't greatly matter if it's an RGB effect rather than a true image mode, unless the latter is a prepress requirement - in which case one would take an untinted image into Photoshop and do it properly there.

Lightroom can work with a PSD file that is in duotone mode, but necessarily does so in the RGB realm, because it refers to the (compatibility mode) RGB preview and not the actual image data. Strictly speaking, I guess Lightroom itself does colour tinting rather than true duotoning; but since separate colours can be applied to shadows and to highlights, and since (crucially) the crossover point ("balance") of these two can be slid up and down the tonal scale, it works pretty well. It's very easy to overdo, so keeping it fully parametric (metadata based) is safer, in my opinion. For best repeatability, based on user presets.

[richardplondon]

Embarassed correction to my previous post... Duotones are, indeed, not currently supported in Lightroom. Adobe have added one-way support for CMYK files, in LR version 3, which must be what I was thinking of. Sorry.