digital negatives .... what's really happening here?

[Shinnen]

Hi,
I like digital images. They force me to see things differently. The other day I shot a movie using the negative setting on my cell phone, and well, you can imagine what it looked like ..... weird. I love it. Then I thought that I would convert it to a positive, which can probably be done, but not by the editor I have. So, I was wondering, what exactly is happening when one converts an image to it's negative. I took a a screen shot, opened my photo editor, and used the histogram to do it, by reversing the Y axis points from bottom to top and from top to bottom; et voila, my negative became a positive. So, my question is, what is actually happening here, colour wise. And, since my movie editor does not have negative option, would it be a simple matter of juggling some of the colour parameters?
Thanks,
........ john

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day John

Beaut to hear from you again
Unfortunately, I do not know the answer/s to your hypotheticals, but they sure sound interesting

Q- have you created a new login with one of the other photo forums I mentioned last week??

Travel safely my friend
Phil

[TCav]

Most image editing applications that I'm aware of have a simple 'one step' operation to convert an image from a positive to a negative. What's more, if you use one of those operations to make a negative of a negative, you get a positive. (It's not great, but it is a positive.)

Each pixel has values for each of red, green, and blue. Converting an image from a positive to a negative simply inverts those values.