workflow for negative film and dias film (help)

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2021-02-06 11:16:06

I am scanning all my late parents film (negatives/dias) with my scanner. Few years ago I decided to let a company do it and it went well, however all I got was in jpg, so I can't adjust the pictures as I like too. Now they all will be in 4000dpi and in tiff format.

Now I got Pixelmator Pro for a great price and thought it might be a great way to archive those files.
I have NO experince how to work with layers and so. I have worked with apple photo's app for adjusting my digital photos, but this is in different I thought.

I can't find any turtorials on working with the analog format.

What I like to understand is

1. layers for every different workflow; like (heal/clone), color adjust, level adjustment etc...
2. anyway to see, what to adjust to get the best result, I mean; what if I think this is great result but if I was unaware that I miss one adjustment that I didn't know (like I got a better picture in the end).. hope you understand what I mean..

I do understand we might not have the same undestanding on what is great picture, but I would like to have the change to play with the program.
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2021-02-09 13:55:30

Hey Jesper,

The TIFF file format is, indeed, often used in professional editing but that's mainly because it allows for better preservation of the image detail. You can repeatedly edit, export, or transfer TIFF images without losing quality — all due to the lossless compression TIFF uses. However, the format itself does not offer any additional features that you could take advantage of when editing (unlike the extended dynamic range in RAW images, for instance). So whether it's a JPEG or a TIFF image, the editing would be the same.

Layers are great if you're looking to edit images nondestructively but using them is not always necessary. Most tools — including all color adjustments and effects — are nondestructive in Pixelmator Pro. This essentially means you can apply changes to the image directly and come back for additional tweaks at any point during editing. If you'd like to clone or repair nondestructively, though, you can create a new empty layer above your image layer and make sure "Sample All Layers" is selected in the Clone or the Repair tool settings.

As for making sure the image looks its best, you could give the machine learning tools a try. The ML tools are trained on millions of professionally-edited photos to intelligently and automatically adjust the colors and contrast of pretty much any image you throw at them. For instance, if you're unsure about the white balance of a photo, you can click "ML" next to the White Balance adjustment and it'll make the necessary adjustments for you. I believe that's roughly what you had in mind in point 2. :wink:
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2021-02-10 05:30:54

Thank you for reply.

One thing though, I thought it would be better to scan I tiff format for better result when editing than jpg?
Or do I misunderstanding you?
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2021-02-11 11:32:37

by Aurelija 2021-02-09 11:55:30 The TIFF file format is, indeed, often used in professional editing but that's mainly because it allows for better preservation of the image detail. You can repeatedly edit, export, or transfer TIFF images without losing quality — all due to the lossless compression TIFF uses. However, the format itself does not offer any additional features that you could take advantage of when editing (unlike the extended dynamic range in RAW images, for instance). So whether it's a JPEG or a TIFF image, the editing would be the same.
This is incorrect information. Unlike PNG or JPEG which can only store images as integers, TILL allows saving images in floating point format. This technically allows TIFF images to contain pixels in range beyond 0-1 (or 0-255 in case of 8 bits per channel and beyond 0-65535 in case of 16 bits per channel stored as integers).
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2021-02-11 13:44:35

One thing though, I thought it would be better to scan I tiff format for better result when editing than jpg?
Or do I misunderstanding you?
TIFF is the best format to use for scanning, for sure! You'll avoid JPEG compression artifacts and have the benefit of editing 16-bit images that store more color values (leonfabr is right about that). That said, editing scanned TIFFs won't really help recover blown-out highlights or bring out more detail from underexposed image areas.
by leonfabr 2021-02-11 09:32:37
This technically allows TIFF images to contain pixels in range beyond 0-1 (or 0-255 in case of 8 bits per channel and beyond 0-65535 in case of 16 bits per channel stored as integers).
That's technically true but Pixelmator Pro doesn't currently support a range extending beyond 1.0. There's a special EDR Mode you can take advantage of if you own Pro Display XDR but it only applies to editing RAW images. In Jesper's case, you wouldn't get much use of the extended dynamic range even if it was available — these extra values simply don't exist in old, scanned photos. A more inclusive HDR/EDR layer support is something we'd like to add, though! leonfabr, if you have any samples of such TIFF files you could share with us, that'd be a big help. Turns out, they're not that easy to come by! You can send them to us at support@pixelmator.com. Thanks!
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2021-02-11 15:49:44

Ok thanks Arelija!
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2021-02-13 09:40:03

by Aurelija 2021-02-09 12:55:30 Layers are great if you're looking to edit images nondestructively but using them is not always necessary. Most tools — including all color adjustments and effects — are nondestructive in Pixelmator Pro. This essentially means you can apply changes to the image directly and come back for additional tweaks at any point during editing. If you'd like to clone or repair nondestructively, though, you can create a new empty layer above your image layer and make sure "Sample All Layers" is selected in the Clone or the Repair tool settings.
Well, I just fooling around with an old negative film, I was creating an layer as you describe, but, when done and afterwards want to make color adjustment, I can see all my repairing "dots" in the picture.. I don't know how to "remove" these? Any suggestion?
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2021-02-16 08:28:03

by Jesper Nielsen 2021-02-13 07:40:03
Well, I just fooling around with an old negative film, I was creating an layer as you describe, but, when done and afterwards want to make color adjustment, I can see all my repairing "dots" in the picture.. I don't know how to "remove" these? Any suggestion?


That's most likely happening because the color adjustments are being applied to the original image layer. In the meantime, the repairs are left untouched. There are a couple of ways you can go about this. First, you could try switching the workflow around and adjust the image colors before making the repairs. Or, if you prefer making the repairs first, you can also group both layers (the original image layer and the one with the repairs) together and apply the color adjustments to the group layer.