In many digitization projects, restorers, archives, and service providers work with various film elements: negatives, intermediate negatives or positives, and one or more prints or individual fragments.

Each of these elements has unique qualities and limitations. For an initial scan with the highest resolution and best image quality, you might choose to scan the original camera negative or —  in the case of two- and three-color processes before the introduction of chromogenic stocks — black-and-white separations.

However, these elements lack crucial information about the film’s look. Ideally,  a print on the original film stock serves as a reference, preserving the film’s original color grading and the distinctive characteristics of the historical color process. 

Style Transfer: An Advanced Method for Combining Multiple Source Elements

This is where Scan2Screen’s multispectral scanning comes in.  Scan2Screen’s unique multispectral scanning and visual rendering workflow allows the creation of a science-backed and physically accurate rendition of  reference elements.

Style transfer improves your results and increases efficiency saving days of color correction

Scan2Screen’s proprietary Style Transfer creates 3D LUTs that can be applied to the scan of the source elements, recreating the color rendition of the reference print while maintaining the high quality of negative scans:

 

Style transfer comparison:
the color values from the multispectral scan of the reference print (left)
were applied to the scan of the negative (right) via a 3D LUT generator.

This approach has been successfully applied to several restorations, including FLAMING EARS (DEU 1992, Ursula Puerrer, Dietmar Schipek, and Ashley Hans Scheirl), a restoration that received rave reviews when presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in 2022 by Karola Gramann and Scan2Screen founding member Lutz Garmsen, who was responsible for the multispectral scan:

“Bless the team that restored this film from very limited remaining material so that I could have my mind totally blown away by this hypersaturated lesbian sci-fi anarchic-apocalyptic world.” 

(Screen Slate)

Trailer FLAMING EARS (DEU 1992, Ursula Puerrer,
Dietmar Schipek, and Ashley Hans Scheirl),
scan and color restoration by Lutz Garmsen with
Scan2Screen’s Workflow and Style Transfer

“I wish each movie could go through this incredibly authentic digitization process. For all who love film colors, it is an absolut must.”

Ursula Puerrer, Co-director of FLAMING EARS

Read our recent paper and get in touch with us to discuss how Scan2Screen’s Style Transfer can benefit your project.

References:

Trumpy, Giorgio; Garmsen, Lutz; Pfluger, David; LeHoty, David; Flueckiger, Barbara (2025): Style Transfer in Advanced Film Digitization and Rendering Workflows. In: Colour Photography and Film. Conference Proceedings. pp. 138–143, (= https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/274848/).

Diecke, Josephine; Trumpy, Giorgio; Weiss, Martin; Flueckiger, Barbara (2020): Lea aus dem Süden. Ethical and Practical Considerations for Digital Color Transfer. In: Journal of Film Preservation, 103, Oct., (= https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/192008/).