How to Reserve Copy Stand on Patron Portal
- Login to webcheckout.emerson.edu/patron
- Click on New Reservation
- Choose Photo Facilities
- Click Browse Catalog
- Click on Copy Stand Scanners
- Add PHO Copy Stand 01 to your cart by clicking the green icon on the right side of the page
- Next, click on Copy Stand Scanner Accessory Kits under Subtypes
- Choose what format of film you are planning to scan. If you are doing more than one (ex. 35mm and 120) you can reserve both.
- Once everything is added to your cart, click Return to Reservation and then click Submit Reservation to confirm.
How to Set Up Copy Stand Station
- When you are here for your reservation, check in with a student employee at 504.
- The student employee on shift should be able to help you set up the camera or they will already have it setup when you arrive.
- The student employee will also grab any scanning equipment you will need.
- Login to the computer using your Emerson credentials
- Ensure that the camera is turned on, the lens cap is off and that the camera is connected to the computer via the usb-c cord
- If all of these things are in place, but the computer is not recognizing the camera, turn the camera off and back on.
- Launch FujiFilm Tether App through the applications folder
- The camera should connect to the app. When it does you will see the option of live view on the app. Click Live View
- This will allow you to see what your camera is seeing.
- Next, you will need to indicate where you would like your scans to go.
- Click on Fuji Tether App in the menu bar
- Click on Preferences
- Open Receive Image Action
- Select Browse under Destination Folder
- Choose a folder that you would like the files to be saved to.
- I highly recommend that you use an external hard drive and do not use a cloud based storage system. The files you will be scanning will be quite large making it difficult to work through the cloud.
- Once you have chosen your destination folder, it’s time to load the film into the negative carrier.
- Clean the light table with a microfiber cloth
- Place the negativer carrier and any other accessories on the light table
- Wipe your film with a microfiber cloth and place it into the negative carrier.
- Line your film up with the lens
- Raise or lower the camera to make sure it is best aligned with your film by turning the silver knob at the end of the stand (shown in the image).
- Once your desired negative frame is centered in the film carrier and focused on the computer’s ‘live view’ you can adjust the ISO, Shutter Speed (SS) and F-stop (F) with the dials at the bottom of the screen.
- The negative’s tonal qualities can be viewed through the histogram in the top left corner
- To tell if you have a good exposure, you want the information on your histogram to be sitting perfectly in the middle or to the right end of the histogram.
- Once you’re pleased with the tonal qualities of your negative preview you can take a photo by clicking the gray circle in the bottom right corner. The border of the circle will turn red for the duration of the shutter. Once the red border is gone the photo has been taken.
- It is best to bracket your exposures slightly so that you can decide which image/exposure you prefer.
- It is best to bracket your exposures slightly so that you can decide which image/exposure you prefer.
- Repeat this process until you have shot your whole roll of film!
Post Workflows
This guide will be highlighting just one way of editing your negatives. It’s recommended that you experiment with different workflows so that you can find one that suits your editing skills the best.
Lightroom Classic
- Once you have finished scanning, move over to one of the epson scanning stations in the PEL to begin working on your images.
- Open Lightroom Classic and Import your photos
- Click on Develop in the top right
- The best thing to do is a mass invert of your files so that you can properly evaluate which negatives you would like to spend time editing.
Inverting Files
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Color Balance - COLOR FILM
- As a baseline color balance, you can use the eyedropper tool under Color Balance. Click on a point that shows the pure film base. This will give an overall correction.
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Crop
- Crop image to your liking after choosing the film base for color balance.
- Crop image to your liking after choosing the film base for color balance.
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Invert
- To invert your files, open up the Tone Curve tool.
- Make sure you are on the RGB Channel.
- Flip the curve by dragging the point in the bottom left corner to the top left corner and by dragging the top right corner to the bottom right corner. This should create an X shape between the active curve and the guide.
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Sync
- With the file that you have made the edits to selected, hold shift and click to the last image so that all of the images you would like to invert are selected
- Click on Sync in the bottom right corner
- Enable the following settings:
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Basic
- White Balance
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Curve
- Parametric Curve
- Point Curve
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Basic
- You should notice that your catalog is synchronized and inverted
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Rating
- Since your images are now inverted, you will be able to get a better idea of what your scans will look like. If you bracketed, it would make the most sense to go through and choose which images you would like to spend time editing.
- Run through the catalog and use the number rating system (click a number 1 - 5) to determine which images you would like to spend time editing.
- Once you have chosen your top picks, you can filter the catalog to only see the images you rated by clicking on the stars in the bottom right corner of Lightroom. If you rated your images 1 star, click the first star and the other images will be filtered out.
Editing your images
- Once you have selected the best images, you should spend time editing and working with the files to improve the color balance and overall quality. If anyone has questions about editing, you should contact your professor!
Lightroom Cataloging, Photoshop Editing
Using photoshop allows you to have even more control over your images. The advantage of Lightroom is that you can batch edit, whereas with Photoshop, you can fine tune your images and work on the details. It’s recommended to open your images in Lightroom first and to do the following steps especially if you use Lightroom to catalog your work. However, you can just open your files straight from your external drive to Photoshop if you don’t use Lightroom.
Lightroom Cataloging
- Import your images into Lightroom
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Invert
- We will do a temporary inversion of our negatives to get an idea of what the images look like and to help us decide which to open in Photoshop
- To invert the images, we will first need to invert our Tone Curve on the RGB channel
- Drag the node in the bottom left corner to the top left corner and drag the node in the top right corner to the bottom right corner.
- COLOR FILM: Click on the eyedropper tool under Color Balance and select the film base as the sample. This will give a better overall tone to the image allowing you to better assess the images.
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Sync
- Click on the file you have made the edits on and then hold shift and click to the last image so that all of your files are selected.
- Click on Sync in the bottom right corner
- Enable the following settings:
-
Basic
- White Balance
-
Curve
- Parametric Curve
- Point Curve
-
Basic
- You should notice that your catalog is synchronized and inverted
-
Rating
- Since your images are now inverted, you will be able to get a better idea of what your scans will look like. If you bracketed, it would make the most sense to go through and choose which images you would like to spend time editing.
- Run through the catalog and use the number rating system (click a number 1 - 5) to determine which images you would like to spend time editing.
- Once you have chosen your top picks, you can filter the catalog to only see the images you rated by clicking on the stars in the bottom right corner of lightroom. If you rated your images a 1, click the first star and the other images will be filtered out.
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Un-invert Images for Photoshop
- Now that the images are rated, you can do one of the following:
- Un-invert all of your images from your shoot
- You would un-invert all of your images if you would prefer to keep them in the catalog in their raw form with no edits
- Un-invert the picked images you are going to edit in photoshop
- This will give you a blank slate to work with in Photoshop which is what we want.
- Un-invert all of your images from your shoot
- To undo the inversion of your images, click on the first photo and click Reset
- With the uninverted image selected, hold shift and click all of the images.
- Click Sync
- Enable the following settings:
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Basic
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Curve
- Parametric Curve
- Point Curve
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Curve
-
Basic
- Now that the images are rated, you can do one of the following:
Photoshop Editing
Now that your images are back to their baseline and you have the files you want to edit rated, it’s time to shift to photoshop. Open your photos in photoshop by dragging the images to the icon or by right clicking and selecting Edit In → Edit in Photoshop 2024.
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Crop
- Select the crop tool and the correct aspect ratio for your image.
- Move the sides of the marquee to indicate how you would like your image to look.
- Disable Delete Cropped Pixels in the top toolbar.
- Save your crop
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Edits
- Before editing, create a duplicate layer by clicking Command + J
- Under Adjustments, select the Invert Layer. This will give a great base to start working with. If you are editing color film, don’t be alarmed if it looks super blue after initially inverting it.
- Under Adjustments, select the Curves layer
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- Select the Red Channel by clicking on RGB and selecting it from the drop down menu.
- While holding the Alt Opt key, drag the sliders shown in the photo below. The image will turn completely red. Keep dragging the sliders until you start seeing clipping in your image. When you start seeing the clipping, push the slider back to the right before the clipping starts. Do this for both sliders and then repeat this step on the Green and Blue channels.
- It’s normal for the file to still look quite blue. To correct this, add a Color Balance Adjustment layer and use the sliders to correct the image. The first image below shows what my image looked like after the curves correction, where the bottom image shows my photo after the color balance adjustment.
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- Once you have a good baseline, continue editing your image to your liking!