Originally posted by IgorZ You are right, I have a lot to learn when it comes to scanning. Just tried scanning a roll of Portra and it looks outright weird. Read something about having to tweak the colours later, now I can see why...
Portra 400 is specifically designed for a hybrid-digital workflow. It's very low-contrast on film so it's easy to scan, then you push the contrast digitally.
Make sure when you scan that you pull the black and white points all the way to the edge of the exposed range on the film, and then adjust the grey point somewhere reasonable. Again, this will make your scan very flat, but importantly it contains all the information from the negative. You can boost contrast in post-processing.
One caveat is that if there is a blown-out region that's widely separated from a particularly important tonal region of your photo you may actually want to pull the grey point slightly towards the main region rather than towards what makes the scan look good right away. Each pixel only has a certain number of shades that can be displayed, and it's not good to crush that tonal space down. In extreme cases you may want to scan twice - once for the highlights, once for the main image - and digitally mask them together.
If you adjust the white/black points on color film do realize that you are actually adjusting three separate curves at the same time here (R,G,B). With some films the exposure shoulders are not in quite exactly the same place, so the highlights might go yellow (for example). You can adjust this by pulling the white point for just the blue curve in a little bit.
For your example, if "everything" (midtones) looks green, then adjust the grey point for the green channel.
You probably won't get it perfect at first but you can bring it a lot closer and get it right in Lightroom.
Also, consider getting a colorimeter at some point. Different types of screens have different coloration (TN tends to be greenish) and they change as they age and the backlights wear. Without calibration you have no idea what it actually will look like in print or on anyone else's screen. You can buy a color-calibrated IPS panel from Dell (P-series) and they will be pretty accurate, but they do drift as they age.
As for developing, nowadays I mostly use Rodinal - it's a "one-shot" so you don't need to worry about feeding your developer, and it lasts forever (unopened cans from 1920 are still good). Use it 1:100 stand developed for one hour for a universal "develops anything" formula - it looks very good with Acros. Many films can also be developed 1:50 for a shorter time. Consult the DigitalTruth online dev charts.
If you are getting B+W developed from a lab you will have very little control over your results, and probably poor quality to boot. It's very easy to develop B+W at home.