All my scans are very soft

[onpoint525]

Since one of my sw upgrades in mid-July, ALL my scans are soft and slightly out of focus. I used image capture on imac running 10.8.5 and scans are nice and sharp. Is there a setting I missed or that defaulted and is messing me up. I just uploaded the most recent upgrade this morning so I'm current on Silverfast SE. I have an Epson Perfection 4990. I'm pretty certain it's a setting in Silverfast but I can't for the life of me figure which it is. Thanks in advance for any help.

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear customer,

The EPSON 4990 uses a fix focus system so it can not be "out of focus".
However it is known that some manufacturers have sharpening filters active in their software by default.
In SilverFast we offer the USM function for this.

Did you use the image auto adjustment (standard is Auto CCR) on the image?
It looks like the highlights and shadows are not set correctly.
That can give an image a "foggy" look.
You can also set the highlights and shadows using the Pipette tool or the sliders below the histogram.
If you click and hold the auto CCR button it also offers different correction types for various image contents.

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[onpoint525]

I changed reflective to 48>24 bit and scanned as tiff instead of jpg and it seems to work. I kept clicking settings until I got a good scan.