I just discovered this forum and am excited about having a place to read and share Silverfast related experiences with other users.
I made the following discovery quite by accident,....but it consistently works, every time on my PC as well as my wifes G3 Mac. We each have a Nikon LS 4OOOED on our computer and the results are always the same. I have been using SF for almost 3 years, I am using SF 5.5Ai.
I started assisting my wife scanning color transparencies on SF. We average 80 or 90 scans per issue into a quarterly 80 page magazine.
I now do all the image scans allowing her to concentrate on layout and design of each issue.
I first noticed that after doing all my preperation color work in SF,...scans would occasionally come into Photoshop really unacceptably dark (muddy and dingy looking) while most of the time they came into photoshop nice and bright as they were in Silverfast.
Why??? I kept asking myself,.. were all my scans not consistantly comming across bright?
Then I tried something! My logic was as follows:
Maybe extratanious light was entering the scanner,...What if I make a little cardboard flip down lid that covers the slide entry slot as well as the sides of my LS2000,...maybe this would keep all other light from corrupting my scan and darkening the image. I even made the inside surface of the lid black to absorb any stray light.
To my surprise,...It works every time,.....if done as follows:
I do ALL my scans as usual, WITHOUT using the little lid,....BUT as soon as my FIRST dark and muddy scan comes accross into photoshop,...I flip the little lid DOWN and just rescan,...and PROBLEM SOLVED, NO more muddy scans.
I thought it was just a fluke, maybe I was wrong,.... So I duplicated it on my wifes LS 4000ED scanner. It works on hers too!!! Flawlessly.
So now it's a lil joke with us when we are scanning together,... all is quiet and all of a sudden one of us says "Flaps Down" and we laugh as we resolve the problem every time by just flipping down this little cost free cardboard cure,........We also are amazed that I even tripped over this solution to our troublesome problem.
I am always eager to improve my abilities using Silverfast.
Thank you for reading my lengthy posting,... I hope it helps someone out there to get the same results we do.
Marty
