black and white photographs from colour negatives?

Question

is it possible to print black and whte photos from (ancient) colour negatives?

Answer 1

It is possible as long as the negative is in good condition. Just let your local photo shop know. I used to be a photo lab technician, and it was fairly easy to do. There might be an extra charge, so make sure to ask about that beforehand.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Printing straight from the negatives to B&W paper is possible but you will find that many labs will not do it or charge you a lot. It is also hit and miss unless they are specialists. I would do as suggested, scan the negatives using a negative scanner and then change the colour image to B&W using the greyscale facility with a photo editing package such as Photoshop. While you are at it, you can also take out scartches and blemishes, sharpen to some extent and adjust contrast and brightness. Save the results and take it on a CD to your local photo processing lab. That way you will also have digital copies of your negs which you can email, etc.

Answer 3

In the old days of home darkrooms, I remember specific print paper and a certain yellow glass filter to spread the gray values exposed by the color negatives. The last time I used a professional photo store for black-and-white, they didn't wash the prints nearly long enough (at least 45 minutes in running water). If you do go that route, you will have to make clear with photo service about whether you will receive "proof quality" or "finish quality".

If it were me, I'd be inclined to have color prints made. Do the manipulation digitally from a scanner into the computer and print out on photo quality paper, which you can do at home or at a copy shop.

Answer 4

printing b/w from color negatives will give very dissapointing results. that is because the layers in the color negative are not properly balanced for tungston light source in the b/w enlarger. color prints from color negatives requires an adjustment for each color range, usually with filter settings so that white comes out white and not yellow, pinkish or greenish. if your negatives are truly antique they may not be printable in a normal lab set up for c22 process where a red filter layer is included as a part of the negative. without a doubt your best bet is a color digital scan, and then work with the color channels in photoshop to get the best look and then convert to b/w.

Answer 5

I recommend that you scan or have scanned the negatives into digital color images... then in a photo editing software like Photoshop, desaturate the image and adjust the levels and curves for the right amount of contrast for the BW image.

good luck...

beaux

Answer 6

Absolutely!
All you have to do is mark that you want to photos to be black and white when you take them to the photo lab.
If there is not a spot to mark this, you can just write in it the "special directions" box.

Answer 7

In the darkroom, you can either go with David's suggestion on panchro paper, OR use regular b&w paper, and increase the magenta (contrast) on your dichroic enlarger. I've had excellent results that way as well.

Answer 8

You must print on panchromatic black-and-white paper. For example, Kodak Panalure: http://www.kodak.com/cluster/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/g27/g27.jhtml

"...Kodak has announced that it will no longer produce or sell this product. However, as of early 2006, it is still available from various online retailers..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panalure
.

Answer 9

Yes you can - you can either change your images to whatever colour you require indicating via your printer's properties. Or download Picasa 2 (google it and it will show up) which is a free imaging program and you can change your image to black and white, sepia etc.

Hope this helps!

Answer 10

take the negs down to boots or somewhere and get them to put your images onto disks. Then you can convert the images to grayscale using one of the many image editing programmes avalible