5 Lightroom Editing Tips After Scanning Using Negative Lab Pro

If you're like me, choosing to scan your film images at home, you likely use Negative Pro Lab. This software plug-in integrates seamlessly with Lightroom, offering exceptional color negative conversions without the hassle of complicated exports or manual curve adjustments. This remarkable tool provides professional-grade tones and colors at a click, saving you money compared to traditional lab costs; these steps of extra effort are worth every penny — trust me.

In this article, I'll discuss converting and editing a few select images from a shoot I did a few months ago with my homie Marcos Montoya while skating in LA. I used the Negative Supply Complete Basic Kit for 35mm/120 Film Scanning Kit, along with a Canon R5 and a Sigma 110mm f.28 ART lens. I'll break down my conversion settings, walk you through my editing methods, and offer some insights I've gathered to improve the quality of your film photographs.

Step One:

Crop the Image to remove the film border.

To allow Negative Lab Pro to convert correctly, you'll need to crop your image and remove any film borders from your negative.

Note: Before cropping for color film, you must white balance from the film border. This will help Negative Lab Pro provide the proper conversion and a fantastic color rendition.

Step Two:

Select negatives for conversion.

After you've crapped all the images, select them and push Control + N on the keyboard (if you're on Mac). This will open the dialogue box for Negative Lab Pro for the next step.

Step Three:

Choose the appropriate conversion settings.

For this example, I used a Canon R5 and a Sigma 110mm lens to scan my images using the Negative Supply Basic 35mm/120 Kit. First, from the dialog menu, you want to choose the source "Digital Camera."

Then, for a color model, you want to choose "B+W."

Then, I leave this on "2 -Low" for pre-saturation as we create or control contrast later when editing.

Roll analysis is a new feature for version three. It creates an auto average for your images, and it's something I'd suggest if the lighting is consistent and the images are on the same roll of film.

After these options, choose "Convert Negatives."

Step Four:

Choose your color preset.

From here, you'll see options similar to Lightroom, where you can adjust everything from exposure to brightness, contrast, white balance, highlights, and more. Under the settings, drop-down is the built-in and custom presets. What you select can vary from roll to roll depending on which film stock is shot, but for this example, I've chosen "NLP Standard - B+W" as I think this gives me a good neutral starting point.

After selecting the color preset, I like to sync the current settings, so I have a good preset to work from before making any individual edits.

Step Five:

Edit your images!

Now, this is where the fun and frustrating part comes in. I typically start with exposure, brightness, and contrast and then move into fine-tuning the images by adjusting the lights and darks. This is all personal preference, but if you want to add a little bit more contrast aside from pulling over the difference lighter, you could raise the darks and lower the whites or vice versa, depending on the tones of your image.

From here, you could also choose from the white balance drop-down what suits your photo best, whether it's realistic or a creative decision on how warm or cool you want your image to look. The left and right arrows on the bottom of the dialog box will allow you to cycle through your photos (this is also how you can copy and paste specific edits).

Extra Tips

A few bonus tips are ensuring you're scanning with consistent settings. For this example, I scanned everything using ISO 160 @F10 1/15 of a second, allowing your scans to be constant regardless of exposure. Still, depending on your light source, it is slightly different, as I'm using the 4x5 Basic by Negative Supply. B & W scans are the easiest to convert/edit, so I recommend you start camera scanning that type of film before moving to color so you don't get frustrated. Also, if you would like to keep the film borders, use the crop tool to either resize your image or hit the reset option so you'll see the entire scan.

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