Written by Drew Evans
I edit my film scans.
It’s a conversation that brings with it some controversy — while many are in favor of editing your film photography images, others stand strongly opposed, and feel that film scans should remain untouched.
Let’s talk about a few ways you can get the best out of your images by using post processing.
Making the Smallest Tweaks
Everyone should make adjustments to exposure, white balance, and crop.
It’s a pretty well-known fact that, depending on where and how your negatives are scanned, you’re likely to see different colors. Looking at a Noristu scan and a Frontier scan side-by-side will show tweaks in colors, from greens to magentas.
Now, if you’re wholly against processing your scans in any way, those colors are what you’re stuck with. But depending on what you shoot, your images might seem tinted too far in one direction or the other.
The first step in my editing process is always to adjust the white balance. If you’re anything like me, you might prefer your images slightly more yellow. After that, I turn to exposure — maybe the shadows aren’t deep enough. Maybe I need a touch more contrast. Finally, I crop and straighten.
I do this on nearly all of my images, because I usually feel that they need a small tweak. They improve my images by quite a bit, even though these edits are really only moving the sliders a few points here and there. A little can go a long way.
Different Edits for Different Film Stocks
I have a clear visual style I’m shooting for. Typically, I use the film stocks that I think represent that style well. So when I’m scanning my negatives at home, I try to apply the same settings for a full roll using Negative Lab Pro in Adobe Lightroom for consistency’s sake.
But those settings change per roll and per film, which is all part of the editing process.
For example, if I’m shooting a roll of CineStill BwXX, I tend to like the contrast a bit higher and the blacks a bit deeper.
But if I’m shooting Ilford HP5, those settings may not apply. Even between rolls of HP5 those settings might change, depending on whether I shot the roll at box speed or pushed to 1600.
Once those scans are into Lightroom, it’s all about the minor adjustments we talked about above. Maybe I’ll tweak the white balance or raise the contrast.
Removing (Some) Distracting Elements
Think about removing small distractions and detractions. I know this one is likely to get a few more naysayers. But hear me out.
We’ve all been there — you capture an image and get the scans back just to find some small distractions. Something that grabs your attention and takes away from the scene.
While they’re likely pretty small, they may throw off the composition of your image.
Here’s an example of an image I shot two years ago at sunset in Southern California. I had the final image in my head as I shot it — one lone person taking a picture from the pier.
But when I scanned the negatives, I noticed there were two distracting elements: a small edge of a bright blanket on the sand in the corner, and an extra flag holder on one of the lampposts.
Every time I looked at this image as I was editing, my eye just kept going back to those two spots. I decided that removing them wouldn’t change the composition in a meaningful way, but it would bring back balance and get the image back to what I was looking for in the first place.
While all of these suggestions are options, as with any edits or changes, there’s always a line. At a certain point, if you’re editing out large chunks of your image or adding things that weren’t there, is it still a film photograph anymore?
For example, in this image, I had the vision in my head. When I saw the scan, there was a distracting yellow sign and woman in the background. Did I go too far?
Ultimately, it’s important to remember the bottom line here: these are your images, and you have a vision.
Edit them as you please, and certainly don’t let others limit your artistic expression.
Thank you so much, Drew! Drew is a regular contributor here at Shoot It With Film, and you can check out his other articles here, such as How to Get Better Images with Point and Shoot Film Cameras and Guide to Picking the Perfect Lens for Your Camera Kit.
You can also check out more of Drew’s work on his Instagram.
Leave your questions about editing your film scans below in the comments!
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Blog Comments
Curtis Heikkinen
April 5, 2024 at 9:44 am
Very nice article. I agree with you regarding editing. I get my images digitized so I can do some editing.
You ask whether you went too far with regard to the last image? Not in my view. Your edits did not materially change the scene. Editing is a matter of degree. I think some editing can go too far. I don’t use photoshop but understand that there is a sky-replacement tool that allows you to substitute a more dramatic sky for a bland one. To me that goes too far. That is inventing a scene, a work of fiction. I suppose if you let the viewer know what you’ve done, it is ok, but for me I would not be interested in an image that strays so far from reality.
I have no problem with removing distracting elements, like things that poke in on the edges of the frame. To me that kind of thing does not materially change the reality of what was there but improves the image.
Editing can go too far. As I said, it seems to be a matter of degree. From what I see, your images are appropriately edited and you seem to have a sound philosophy for editing your images. Thanks again for this article and for posting your beautiful images.
Drew E.
April 6, 2024 at 12:25 pm
Thanks for the reply and for the kind words, Curtis. I like the phrase you used — “inventing a scene”. That’s exactly what I try to avoid.
ed
April 5, 2024 at 10:49 am
I do not edit my photos. If it is a bad photo it stays a bad photo. As my late uncle who was a photographer said. Get it right in the camera the first time. The same as digital photographers trying to make their images look like film. Why? If digital is so great it should be perfect at all times. Shoot film if you want it to look like film.The reason I shoot film is the happy accidents, unpredictability etc..The only editing I have the lab do is cropping and scratch and dust removal when I get enlargements for art shows. I never color tweak as you say.
Bill Watts
April 5, 2024 at 11:23 am
I would tend to agree that an image shot on film may be edited after the film has been processed, just as would be done when exposing a print in the enlarger. Radical editing should be avoided, but minor corrections are certainly permissible to get the best out of the shot
SANDY
April 5, 2024 at 12:37 pm
I think it’s a mistake to say that there’s such a thing as too much editing. Photography is an artistic medium and shouldn’t be limited to a single approach.
For one thing, you’re editing reality as soon as you choose your frame, your focus, your exposure, black and white or colour, film or digital. The Reality in front of your camera has already had huge chunks cut out of it before your negative even enters a scanner or enlarger. And if you used flash, turned a light on or off or physically moved an object in your composition to make it better, then you’re just using your hands to do the editing on location.
As someone who has always shot on film all their life and wishes that digital photography didn’t dominate the world the way it does, I understand that there’s an impulse to treat film as somehow more real and a greater test of skill than digital. But that’s not the case. Before digital, there were countless analogue photography techniques for making subtle and extreme changes to photos. Film photographers have never been obliged to adhere to Group-f/64-levels of purity in their post processing under the enlarger. What matters most is the final image you want to create. If it took a split second to expose and an hour to edit in Lightroom with digital dodge-and-burn brushes, spot cleaning, extreme contrast edits and lots of A-B testing with your cropping, then there must have been something in your negative that was worth the work, even if the initial exposure wasn’t 100% on point.
This is especially true when considering what Drew writes about the difference between scanners. There’s also the difference in the quality and competence of the scanner’s operator. It’s taken me a while to get to grips with the best settings and limitations of the two scanners I’ve had, which has meant I’ve needed to re-rescan and re-edit images. My ultimate goal is to create an image that feels truthful and evocative of something I felt when taking it. Depending on the image and the decisions made behind the camera and in the edit, a truthful image can have a closer relationship to Reality as people experience it than a perfectly exposed image which has only been spot-cleaned.
Keith Allsopp
April 5, 2024 at 2:11 pm
I have no issue with anyone editing their work. That is your work and your prerogative. I would however, ask a simple question:
Why use film if you then want to digitise and edit?
I scan my negs primarily for indexing and to prioritise those I may want to print in the darkroom. This is about work flow efficiency; and saves wasted electricity, time and chemicals.
I can also test what darkroom adjustments I would like and be able to do. Again, this is for efficiency.
But if you want to print from digital, why not shoot digital?
My view is that for colour digital and C41 etc are not dissimilar in print quality. Mono is very different and I always carry a film camera with a roll of B&W along with my digital.
If you shoot film, print from negatives; digital is digital.
Drew E.
April 6, 2024 at 2:31 pm
Hey Keith, thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts!
For me, shooting film is about more than just whether I’ll print or not. I like it because it’s a far more fulfilling artistic process for me. The shooting experience is different, the results are different (including editing), and my overall pride in my work is greater. And part of that process is digitizing and fine-tuning my images while keeping the underlying qualities that make film special.
No matter, it sounds like we both agree — film and digital can have a place in a photographer’s bag side-by-side. I just prefer my bag to be all film these days.
Lachezar
April 5, 2024 at 2:56 pm
Great article and follow up conversation!
I’m still grappling with this question…
Derrick Buckner
April 5, 2024 at 7:32 pm
As soon as you scan your negatives into a digital file, you have edited them. When you convert them to a positive using NLP or other means, you are ending the photo. So before you even get to the hands on editing you will probably do, the photo has already been edited. The only way to get around this is to use an enlarger and make darkroom prints. Even then, back in the day, prints were edit via dodging and burning. In the end, its up to the photographer to edit as they wish as they have the final vision of the finished product.
Mike Callaghan
April 6, 2024 at 1:35 am
The only edits I do are
1. Colour correction, contrast, and exposure correction.
2. Re-alignment of horizon or correct perspective, and cropping.
3. Other edits such as dodging or burning in, the sort of things I used to do in a darkroom.
If you can’t do it in a darkroom then anything else such as adding/subtracting elements gets away from the reason you shot it on film.
Bill Brown
April 20, 2024 at 9:56 am
I always find the replies to this type of post quite interesting as my whole working career, 1976 to present, has been dedicated to retouching photographs. Thirty of those years were 100% film. I retouched negs as well as final darkroom prints. I was an airbrush artist at my height of film work and I did most of what people now consider as photoshop. I removed cars, telephone poles and saved images that could not be re-shot. None of my work was ever detectible. I’m now a digital darkroom specialist and all that has changed are the tools. Photography is an art form therefore each artist has the right to fulfill their vision for their image. As Sandy pointed out so well there is no such thing as an unedited, pure image except in someones mind(no, that’s been edited too).