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My flatbed scanners work well with xsane. The resulting colors are far from being natural after using the button for negatives. I found a hint that GIMP would be suited.
Distribution: Debian /Jessie/Stretch/Sid, Linux Mint DE
Posts: 5,195
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OK, that is a much more accurate description. So you problem is not that you cannot get the negative scanned, it is that the colors do not look right.
Negatives were once developed (I mean in R&D, not the chemical development process) that in conjunction with a certain photo paper and the correct exposure time with cyan, magenta and yellow light. This was a tedious, sensitive and accurate process to get the right color balance.
It is not strange that standard scanner software cannot do this, it can invert the colors for you, but not adjust the color balance on a scale which darkroom equipment can do.
Once you have the colors inverted you can use Gimp. (Or have Gimp invert the colors, that is no problem either). It all boils down to getting the correct correction curve. Once you have the basic curve, only smaller adjustments are needed, correction for the specific negative and its exposure. Which also varies a lot.
Gimp is very versatile. It can do anything. Maybe too versatile. You could try RawTherapee, which is completely focused (no pun intended) on photo processing.
You might try aaphoto on the scan first. Keep the original. Blend to taste or what not. Otherwise gimp or another image application will help you adjust the image. I often find that mixing the adjustments back with the original image helps to keep the details and soften the edits. Gimp can break the color out to RGB and other formats so you can edit each color individually. Although you might find other ways to scan the images less technical. AFAIK you only have 8 bits per color channel in gimp which might be too limiting. Although it depends on the quality of the scan. Dark table or light table might be better suited depending on the source image. Not that I've ventured much past gimp in my travels.
Thanks for the support. After spending a rainy sunday afternoon with the 2 options I concluded to go back to the windows-based scanner software delivered by CANON. May be better suited for simple minded guys like me.
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