Can I use software to print photos directly from scanned negatives?

Q  I have recently acquired a device to scan colour photo transparencies and colour and black-and-white negatives to my computer.

The colour transparencies are fine to print with my present software, but what I need is a program to print positive photographs from my black-and-white and colour negatives. Do you know if there is software to do this?
Stan Williams

A  You can do this in Microsoft Paint. The application is included with all versions of Windows – you will find it on the Start menu, under Accessories. Just open your image, select Invert Colors from the Image menu and then save the image.

However, doing this one image at a time will be tedious. If you have a lot of negatives, a much better option is to use a batch image processor such as Bimp Lite – you can get a free download by clicking here.

Install and run the program, then select the folder containing the negative images using the tree explorer pane at the left of the Bimp Lite window. The contents of the folder will then appear at the right, together with a preview of any image you select in that folder.

Look under the Miscellaneous section of the program window and enable the Invert Colours option. Deselect all other options in this section. Unless you want to change the format or size of the images as part of this conversion process, leave all the other settings as they are.

At the bottom right of the window there is a dropdown menu with Output in Same Folder selected. Open this and select Output in Different Folder.

Then use the box below this to choose a different folder to your original images. Click the yellow folder icon to the right of this followed by the Make New Folder button to create one called ‘Converted images’. Now select it and click OK.

Finally, click the Start button at the bottom of the window to start the batch conversion – how long this takes will depend on the number of images that need to be converted. The positive images will be saved in the folder just created, leaving the originals intact.