Film Scan Colour Correction: Why We Never Leave It on Auto

Film scan colour correction is the bit of developing nobody sees, and it's the difference between scans that look like your photos and scans that look like a machine's best guess. Here's what a scanner does on its own, what a person actually corrects, and why we never leave a frame on auto.

You've probably seen it. A sunset that came back grey and cold. Snow that looks like slush. A roll where every frame has a slightly different tint, even though you shot it all in the same afternoon.

It's not always the film, and it's usually not you. More often, it's a scanner that's been left to make up its own mind.

What a Scanner Does on Its Own

A colour negative is orange, with every colour reversed. Before you see anything, the scanner has to strip out that orange, flip the colours back and then decide what the scene was meant to look like.

That last part is a guess. Looking at the negative alone, the scanner can't tell whether a warm tint is golden evening light you wanted, or a colour cast it should get rid of.

Why Auto Gets It Wrong

Automatic correction makes that guess frame by frame, and it leans on an old assumption from the days of machine printing: that a photo should average out to a neutral grey. For an everyday street scene, that's close enough. When a frame is mostly one colour or mostly bright, it goes wrong:

• Snow and white beaches come out dull and grey.
• A golden sunset gets cooled down, because the machine thinks the warmth is a mistake.
• A frame full of one strong colour pushes everything else the opposite way.
• Frames shot in the same light come out in different tints, because each one is guessed on its own.

Scanners don't agree with each other either. Different makers have their own idea of how film should look, so the same negative can come out warmer and punchier on one and flatter and cooler on another.

There's no one look to film. What one scanner sees isn't necessarily what your eye saw, or what another scanner would see. And a lot of the film photos you see online have been edited afterwards, so they're not a fair guide to what comes straight off a scanner either.

What Film Scan Colour Correction Actually Does

Correction means a person looks at every frame and fixes what the scanner got wrong. Here, that covers:

• Colour. Taking out casts the scanner or the light added, while keeping the ones that belong there, like warm evening light.
• Density. Setting how light or dark the frame is, so the highlights and shadows are balanced and you're not left with washed-out skies or muddy shadows.
• Orientation. Making sure everything's the right way up.

The aim isn't to give your photos a look. It's scans that look like what you saw when you pressed the shutter.

Why We Never Leave It on Auto

We want you to get the best from your negatives. So we don't let the scanner do all the heavy lifting. Often it can't, depending on what it's scanning.

That's why we never use auto. Every frame is corrected by a person, then double-checked before your scans go out. Not just the tricky ones. Every frame on every roll.

It's slower than letting the machine get on with it. But a scanner only knows what it thinks the colours should be. A real person with twenty years in the industry knows what they should be.

If You Want to Edit Your Own

If you like editing your photos yourself, TIFF scans give you the most room to work with. There's more on that in JPEG or TIFF? Which scans to pick.

And if a frame still doesn't look right to you when your scans arrive, get in touch and we'll take another look.

When you're ready, send us your film from anywhere in the UK, or drop it in at the lab in Norwich.