HDR Studio 8 Workflow Question

[briank]

I am a SF6 licensee who is considering upgrading my 3 licenses, Nikon 5000ED, Epson V750 & HDR Studio to SF8. (I know HDR Studio is still in beta.) Obviously this would involve a considerable outlay on my part so I want to make sure I know what I am doing. My preferred workflow for color negatives in SF6 is to make a linear scan of the negatives in 48bit HDR as positives with ICE (as necessary), invert them in Photoshop with ColorPerfect, and then adjust them further in HDR Studio and/or Photoshop depending on the need.

Obviously, ICE is “baked-in” so I was one of the people who was very enthusiastic about the prospect of incorporating iSRD into SF for my Nikon 5000ED. However, I am a bit disappointed after my wait to discover that, as implemented, SF8 will not allow an infrared scan (either ICE or iSRD) in the 48bit HDR scan mode. I am wondering, however, if as an SF HDR Studio licensee, this is a non-issue.

So, here is my basic question. If I upgrade all of my SF versions to version 8, will I (with particularly my Nikon, but also my Epson scanner) be able to perform a linear scan on my color negatives (as positives) in 64bit HDRi mode, invert that scan with ColorPerfect in Photoshop, and then be able to take that scan into SF HDR Studio for further editing and particularly to make adjustments via iSRD? There may be an obvious answer to this question but I have never worked with an image that contained a separate infrared channel. Is that something that will interfere with Photoshop and/or ColorPerfect use?

Thanks,

Brian Kipnis

[LSI_Morales]

Hi Brian

I am a bit disappointed after my wait to discover that, as implemented, SF8 will not allow an infrared scan (either ICE or iSRD) in the 48bit HDR scan mode. I am wondering, however, if as an SF HDR Studio licensee, this is a non-issue.

Actually 48 bit HDR scan mode is supposed to create a raw file, which means a file with untouched information as detected by the scanner. Allowing infrared correction was a detailed we overlooked in previous versions.

If I upgrade all of my SF versions to version 8, will I (with particularly my Nikon, but also my Epson scanner) be able to perform a linear scan on my color negatives (as positives) in 64bit HDRi mode, invert that scan with ColorPerfect in Photoshop, and then be able to take that scan into SF HDR Studio for further editing and particularly to make adjustments via iSRD? There may be an obvious answer to this question but I have never worked with an image that contained a separate infrared channel. Is that something that will interfere with Photoshop and/or ColorPerfect use?

With SilverFast 8 you will be able to perform 64 bit HDRi scans of your transparent material with your Nikon and your Epson scanner. However opening this file in photoshop will destroy the infrared channel information. Hence a change in your workflow is needed.
The simplest way would be to make the conversion to positive and scratch correction in HDR Studio, then further adjustments in Photoshop.

However if you want to make the conversion to positive in photoshop, you will open the 64 bit HDRi file in SilverFast HDR Studio for infrared corrections then export the file in 48 bit (not HDR), this will apply a gamma gradation to your files (if you need the linear gamma, you will have to open the Preferences/General in SilverFast and set the gamma value to 1.0 before exporting your picture).
The resulting file will be a 48 bit tiff file with linear gamma.

And yet another option would be to scan your negative in SilverFast in 48 bit mode (not HDR) and positive, this will allow you to perform corrections with iSRD and changing the gamma value to 1.0 before exporting the file. This will produce a file with linear gamma in 48 bits and infrared corrections applied.

Kind regards

[bicyclefreak]

Hi there,

I can't figure out how the job manager is supposed to work in HDR Studio. What I want to achieve, is to load a set of HDR images, prepare either individual adjustments or general like Gane, iSRD etc., and then apply the changes and create jpegs in batch and save them in a certain place. The doc says, I have to run a preview scan of all positives and store this as a set of frames. But I have already scanned the slides and I'm looking for a way to load the HDRi scans into Job Manager. The rest is obvious. Is it me or is it beta? Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

regards , Dieter

[LSI_Morales]

Hi Dieter

JobManager is not yet implemented into HDR Studio 8 Pre-Release version at this point. Right now is not possible to process multiple files in this version of the program. There is already a feature request for this which will be attended during further development of the application.

Kind regards

[briank]

Thank you Alejandro. I appreciate your suggestions and will follow them. For what its worth, (I appreciate that I am single customer and certainly in no position to second guess LSI) but I do not think the purity of a raw workflow in HDR will not be significantly disturbed by allowing the end user (by choice) to enable ISRD. In my case, I want to be able to get through a bunch of scans relatively quickly and come back and spend time on my best images as time allows. Having iSRD enabled in that workflow would enable me to do that without having to go back and either rescan and/or spend a bunch of time dealing with unmitigated dust and scratches. And being able to choose HDR ensures that I have not mistakenly missed some other intrusion on the raw scan. So, in being able to use infrared dust and scratch correction with a 48 bit HDR scan before, I guess I (for one) was willing to live with a modified form of a purely RAW scan. Is that so wrong? How about leaving it to the choice of the user instead of limiting this choice in the software? Just a thought, and no reason for you to have respond.

[LSI_Morales]

Hi briank

I guess I (for one) was willing to live with a modified form of a purely RAW scan. Is that so wrong? How about leaving it to the choice of the user instead of limiting this choice in the software? Just a thought, and no reason for you to have respond.

Well, there is in fact an alternative. You can activate the iSRD while scanning in 48 bit mode (non-HDR) and deactivate the gamma value or set it to 1.0. Of course making sure no other corrections are applied to your pictures.
This will produce exactly the type of scans you just described.

Cheers