Scanning Black and White Negatives With a Flatbed

So you have the prints from the lab and you can scan them easily enough, but you want those cool little borders on your pictures that you see all those people scanning negatives have.

Can you get them with just your flatbed scanner? The answer is yes! However you will need some kind of imaging editing software. (Photoshop is the best if you can get hold of it.)

Here's how you do it.

1. Get the strip of negative that you want to scan in and pop it in the scanner. It doesn't really matter which way as it can easily be adjusted afterwards if you get it wrong. I seem to find that scanning the glossy side down works best for some reason.

Choose any scanner setting that you might want to use such as dust removal etc.

2. Next you need to open the scan in Photoshop or your image editing program. It should look like a normal negative at this point. Now you want to invert the image to make it look positive. This is done by hitting Ctrl + i in Photoshop. You will have to look around a little in the menu if you are using a different program.

3. Now you should have a strip of film full of your photos! Usually from here I crop them with the boarders and if I need to, I adjust the contrast and brightness a little to help with the clarity of the picture.  Once you crop them individually remember to check they are the right way. Look at the writing along the bottom if you can't remember which way you took the photo.

If its wrong go to the menu and click Image>>Image Rotation>> Flip Horizontally and this will fix that and put your image the correct way again.

Remember that you don't want to overdo the editing and ruin the magic of the Holga!

Note: This only works for black and white film, but its a great way of getting cool looking Holga shots without having to fork out for a negative scanner. 

The picture below was done using this method. If you have any questions please ask!

Labels: Black and White, Boarders, Flatbed, Negative Scanning, Tips