adjusting ski slope pics

[bwana]

I have a series of negatives scanned with a nikon 4000 film scanner. for some reason the images of the snow covered ski slopes are brighter in the central area - like you would get if you dodged the central area 3 stops. (maybe because they are photos of snow scenes and the brightness overwhelms the film. or maybe because they were shot with a cheap waterproof 35 camera - the canon underwater camera -and there is light fall off - but i've never seen this before in 'normally' lit scenes with the waterproof elf) . I can fix this by manually burning in the center of the image but i would like a more automated approach. I would like to make an adjustment layer and apply that to all the images.

Any recommendations on where to look for some pointers on how to do this effectively?

[Jonathan Wienke]

Make an adjustment layer with a layer mask, airbrush the layer mask to suit, then drag the adjustment layer to all of the affected images.

[bwana]

Make an adjustment layer with a layer mask, airbrush the layer mask to suit, then drag the adjustment layer to all of the affected images.
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which control do you find the most natural and subtle - levels, curves, bright and contrast, or selective color? i find brightness and contrast most useful on this b&w pic but would like to hear your experiences.

tnx

[benInMA]

If you've got the original film see if the film is actually blown out.

If not if you have control of the exposure/gain on the scanner try a manual exposure.

I forget off the top of my head but for negative film I believe you want to increase the exposure to preserve highlights.  The highlights are a dark area on the film, you need to increase the exposure to see into the "shadows" on the negative.

Once you have all the data you need it should be easier to fix the final picture.  If you just can't get everything then you would maybe want to do multiple scans and piece it together.

[Jonathan Wienke]

which control do you find the most natural and subtle - levels, curves, bright and contrast, or selective color? i find brightness and contrast most useful on this b&w pic but would like to hear your experiences.

I would use either Levels or Curves.

[Gregory]

I have a series of negatives scanned with a nikon 4000 film scanner. for some reason the images of the snow covered ski slopes are brighter in the central area.
Any recommendations on where to look for some pointers on how to do this effectively?
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(I just realised that you might not be using SilverFast.)

if you are using SilverFast, I would seriously recommend that you work with the negafix profiles for your film to get the most appropriate and pleasing result possible. the profiles are very powerful with curves for each of the RGB colours and I would much rather make the adjustments at this level before scanning than in Photoshop after scanning.