[Tutorial] How to invert a film negative in Pixelmator Pro

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2022-03-22 16:02:23

Many of us (especially those born before the invention of digital cameras) will most likely find some old-school film negatives tucked away around the house. The good news is, you can save these film rolls from collecting dust and easily bring the images back to life using Pixelmator Pro.
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First, you’ll need to scan the negatives. This can be done professionally at a studio, or given the right equipment, you can also make decent scans at home. Here are a few ideas for how you can do that:

Use a dedicated photo negative scanner. There are different types of scanners for different budgets you can purchase and set up a semi-professional mini studio at home. This is especially worthwhile if you’ll be scanning larger volumes of photos.
Take a picture of the negative on a backlit surface. You can use your phone or tablet to illuminate the film and take a picture of it with another phone or camera. A good rule of thumb when using digital displays for backlighting is to lift up the negatives slightly so that they aren’t touching the screen directly. This way, you’ll avoid the tiny pixels of the display reflecting in the photo.
Use a flatbed scanner. Most scanners are not backlit and this will typically result in dark, low-quality scans. To work around this, you can place reflective material on top of the film so that the scanner light bounces off of it. Or, you can also light the back of the film through a piece of paper using a strong light source.

Step 1
Import the scanned negative into Pixelmator Pro

Launch Pixelmator Pro and create a new empty document (File > New). You can simply select the default canvas size (3360 x 2100 pixels) and crop or expand the canvas later, if needed.
Scan the negative:
• If you’re using a flatbed scanner, you can import the scanned images to Pixelmator Pro directly from the File > Import dialog.
• If you’re taking an image of the negative with your iPhone or iPad, choose Insert > Import from iPhone or iPad, select your device, and snap a picture.
• In all other cases, choose File > Open to open the scanned images from Finder.

Step 2
Crop and straighten the negative

Once you’ve imported your scan, crop, rotate, or straighten it using the Crop tool to adjust its composition.
To select the Crop tool:
• Choose Tools > Crop from the Tools menu at the top of your screen.
• Press C on your keyboard.
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Step 3
Invert from negative to positive

The first thing you need to do to convert a negative into a color photo is to invert its colors. To invert colors, do any of the following:
• Choose Image > Invert Colors from the Image menu at the top of your screen.
• You can also press Command + I on your keyboard if you’re used to working with shortcuts.

You can also invert the colors of images using Color Adjustments or Effects. This would let you control the intensity of the Invert adjustment or combine it with any other adjustments or effects. Keep in mind that if you choose to invert the image this way, any further edits to image colors, contrast, or lighting would have to be reversed.

After inverting colors, you may notice that the image looks faded, lacks contrast, and leans heavily towards a bluish-cyan color. This blue tint comes from a special orange mask — a result of the film developing process — being inverted (if you look at the color wheel, blue is the opposite of orange).
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The image scan can also be easily affected by the color balance of the light source used when scanning. To neutralize any color distortion caused by the scanning process or the film itself, you’ll want to adjust the RGB channels of your image using the Curves or Levels adjustments. In this tutorial, we’ll use the Curves adjustment.

Step 4
Set the White, Black and Gray points using Curves

First, to turn on the Curves adjustment, do either of the following:
• Choose Format > Color Adjustments > Curves
• Press Command + K on your keyboard

Make sure RGB is selected in the Curves pop-up menu. The three eyedroppers next to this menu are the Black, White, and Gray point pickers. We’ll be using these pickers to pick colors from darkest, brightest, and mid-toned areas of the image.

Start by choosing the Black point picker and click the area in your image you think should be pure black.

Next, choose the White point picker and select an area of your image that should be pure white, and finally, choose the middle, Gray point slider and select an area of your image that should be a neutral grey.
Tip
Sometimes, it can be difficult to distinguish the darkest and brightest areas in a flat inverted photo. To give yourself a more workable image to begin with, you can take advantage of the Auto Color adjustment. In some cases, using this adjustment alone will be enough to color-correct a photo.

To apply Auto Color, click the More button next to the eyedroppers and choose Auto Color:
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Don’t worry if the image colors don’t look exactly how you want them right away — you can always reset the Curves adjustment (just click Reset at the top of the adjustment) and start again, or, to make even more subtle changes, you can also adjust each of the RGB channels individually.

Step 5 (Optional)
Adjust individual color channels

If you'd like to adjust the red, green, or blue channel individually, click the Curves pop-up menu and select the channel you’d like to edit.

Traditionally, when color-correcting images, you'll want to keep an eye on the color histogram and place the black point where the particular color graph starts (to set the shadows) and white point where the graph ends (to set the highlights). The adjusted channels may look something like this:
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Also, adding a point in the middle of the color channel curve and dragging it up or down will allow you to control the intensity of the midtones of that color channel. E.g. dragging the point upward will add more red to the image and dragging it down will reduce red.
Note
To reduce the intensity of a color channel Curves introduce more of the complementary color to the image. The complementary color pairs are red—cyan, green—magenta, and blue—yellow.
That said, feel free to experiment with the curves to find a combination that works best for your specific image. Just keep in mind that negative conversion is more of a creative process rather than a technical one, so the final result should be something that looks good to you.

Step 6
Finishing touches

If you’re done editing your image but feel like it could be lighter, darker, or have a little bit more contrast, you can additionally adjust the RGB curve by adding and dragging points on it. You can check out a tutorial we’ve created, explaining the basic techniques of adjusting the tonal curve here.

Or, if you want a simpler way to adjust the contrast, highlights, or shadows of the overall image, you can also use the sliders in the Lightness color adjustment (Format > Color Adjustments > Lightness).

And that’s pretty much it for this inversion method! Hope you’ll find this tutorial useful and if you have questions regarding any of the steps, feel free to share them below.
User avatar

2022-04-10 22:53:25

Anything more straightforward/ advanced in the works by chance?