How do I turn a black and white scanned negative into a positive image?

Question

I have a number of 50 year old family photographic negatives. I purchaced an Epson Photoscanner (which scans negatives) to scan these. Unfortunately the negatives do not fit into the film holder and I have no choice but to scan them in the negative, then attempt to reverse the negativity using one of the photo programmes.
Any suggestions for doing this would be most gratefully received

Thank you, but I live miles away from such a facility, and as there are several thousand negatives it might prove a little costly

It is an Epson V350, and the negatives are 127 120 or 620. (All the 35mm ones and slides will go directly into the scanner.) The negatives, being largely immediately post 2nd war, are not good quality as they were all taken with Kodak box snapshot cameras, and I really just want to "Sort them out" as I don't even know who some of the people are.

Answer 1

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Answer 2

Black And White Positive Film

Answer 3

You don't say what model of Epson scanner you have, or what the negative sizes are. The answer you get will depend on how much you are prepared to spend (which is another way of saying how much value do you put on the family negatives). The supplied Epson film holders tend to be flimsy, and for other than 35mm film, the bundled software often gets confused in scanning multiple negative frames over where the frame boundaries are. Depending on the scanner model, you may be able to get a better film holder at betterscanning.com.

Vuescan's scanner driver software is far better than the bundled Epson drivers, although it doesn't handle batch scanning quite as well. However you do it, if you have many negatives to scan, and it sounds like it, you will need to plan it carefully and allocate quite a bit of time for the task. It's not difficult, just tedious. I have done this myself, and have already scanned over a thousand slides, and have started the same process for my negative collection, which is extensive. A good scanner will make the job easier.

Answer 4

Take them to a dedicated photo developing store. They have in-store negative trays they can attach to their digital photo processor and transfer them by hand to media. I used to do that for customers all the time, I'd burn them to a CD.\

It depends on the place, but a good photo tech will take their time and adjust for the color and brightness and fading do to the oldness of the negatives. But you can also ask that they do not adjust anything and just scan them in.

The printer processor does all the converting of the negative and you will get a far better image then anything you can buy in the retail market.

Answer 5

I use a light box and a JVC KY F-30 camera but that is a very expensive solution. An ordinary scanner will do the job and the scanner software will have neg to positive software. Obviously, the higher the resolution of the scanner the better the results will be. Scanners are very cheap nowadays (£30-50)

Answer 6

If you are doing it yourself, you can easily reverse the colors. Use a program like:

Photoshop
Fireworks
The Gimp. (FREE)
Paint.net (FREE)

Do a google search for tutorials

BTW, the option might be labeled 'Create negative'. Just so you know, creating a negative from a negative will give you a positive.

Answer 7

I found a free download of the latest version of Gimp here http://j.mp/1wDtvFo

The latest Gimp is better than ever. Its developers are taking the user experience into serious consideration and are speeding up development for this already great photo editor.

Answer 8

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Answer 9

Hey,
I was looking for a free download Black

Answer 10

Download irfanview.com (it's free) and use the convert to negative, convert to positive