I don't know why the information didn't come through that I copied and pasted but I'll try again:
RE: [Spotmatic] VueScan vs SilverFast Good Morning! As I think the ability to do high-quality, affordable scanning is a real asset for those of us who would like to continue using our great old film cameras, I'd like to offer a bit of advice on this subject. I've retired after a twenty-year career doing imaging work for an archives. Half way through I made the transition from large format film copying to digital for most purposes. I've digitized many thousands of images, black and white and colour, in a wide assortment of formats using quite an assortment of scanners as well as digital cameras. SilverFast and Vuescan are very different products. In my view Silverfast is intended to emulate the multiple functions of sofware usually associated with high-end pre-press scanning systems, while Vuescan is intended to give photographers a simple,high-qulaity tool for basic scanning. Hence the differences in complexity and price. One important lesson I've learned working with large numbers of images often with short deadlines is to keep things simple. In my view Photoshop is a much better tool than scanner software for making image corrections. All I expect of scanner software is to produce files that aren't screwed up for Photoshop. There are three key screwups to avoid. The first screwup is inadequate bit depth. For best results, always scan black and white negs in 16-bit mode and colour negs and slides in 48-bit mode. This gives you far more information for making tonal and colour corrections, which will help you avoid problems like blown-out highlights. (In Vuescan you must select bit depth in two places- Bits per Pixel on the Input tab and TIFF File Type on the Output tab.) The second screwup is scanning your files as JPEGs. Always save your scans as TIFFs. Google "JPEG compression artifact" if you want to know why. The third screwup to avoid is "clipping" of highlights and shadows. By default, most scanning software is set up to cut off a certain amount of highlight and shadow information. The intent is to produce "brilliant", punchy images. Unfortunately this also throws away information that can greatly improve the tonal range and richness of images. The throwing away process is called "clipping". One of the strengths of Vuescan is that it allows you to take control over clipping very simply. Most other software packages are a pain in the butt for this particular function. I'll cut to two basic methods that work well for me. You'll need to switch on the advanced "more" interface options in Vuescan to use them. Method 1- suitable for scanning large numbers of images in a hurry. Settings: Under the Color tab, select Auto Levels. Enter 0 for Black Point and 0.1 for White Point. Select "generic" film type. Set Output Color Space to Adobe RGB or Gray as appropriate. You can leave all other settings under Color at their defaults, as other corrections are better made in Photoshop. Method 2- suitable for somewhat better individual scans. Settings: Start with settings as in Method 1. Activate histogram by going to the Prefs tab and selecting "linear" as the histogram option. Adjust the sliders on the histogram so that they are positioned just outside the top and bottom of the curve. This will give you maximum image information without clipping. You will have to do this for every image. Note that the numbers in the Black Point and White Point boxes will change as you do this. Comments: I came up with these methods after considerable trial and error with Vuescan. They have worked well for me over a good many versions of the software. The resulting files may not be that great in terms of brightness, colour balance or contrast. The important thing thing is that they will contain the information needed to make those corrections most effectively in Photoshop. Questions welcome. John Poirier --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
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