Lousy negative color ? NegaFix is the solution!

[pderocco]

(Using 5.2.1r05 with Nikon LS-2000, calibrated with E0105111 reference slide.)

I'm getting really wretched results when scanning negatives. The colors all look unnatural. Sometimes, I scan two adjacent negatives, of substantially the same subject, and they come out with dramatically different color casts (not just brightness, which could be due to the original exposure). I'm scanning in 48-bit HDR mode (What does HDR stand for, by the way?) so all the tweaks that Silverfast allows are disabled, as far as I can tell.

Can anyone explain this behavior? Is there a checklist of alternative settings that may be getting me in trouble?

Although I can't find it any more, I recall reading somewhere that the dialog box that allows the selection of the particular type of negative film is intentionally missing from the LS-2000 version of Silverfast. Why is this? I would think that the conversion from negative to positive would be (or at least could be) done in the computer, so should have nothing to do with what scanner is being used. What profile is being used? How do I specify a particular profile to use, based on the type of film (Kodak ASA 100) that I'm using? Bottom line: how do I get decent color reliably?


_________________
Ciao,
Paul

<b> SilverFast Ai 5.5 with NegaFix solves Problems with negative Film </b>

SilverFast Ai 5.5 is also available for the Nikon LS2000. The new NegaFix feature with many negative film profiles and ability to create custom profiles, solves all negative film problems now.
It took a while to develop this solution, but finally it is here now!

Karl-Heinz Zahorsky
President
LaserSoft Imaging

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: President_LSI on 2001-10-02 18:19 ]</font>

[RogerMillerPhoto]

Hi Paul, I just sent you a reply, but it didn't showup, so I'll try again.

I don't know anything about LS-2000 scanning, but I think you are outputting a 48-bit file for use with HDR and you don't have HDR. There are two parts to SilverFast. There's SilverFast Ai and there's SilverFast HDR. You only need Ai as it can process you negative and, in theory, do all of the color corrections. It should work with all of the bits available from your scanner (36 maybe?) and, after the processing you tell it to do, will output a 24-bit file. There's no compromise using this method. But you can also use Ai in what I call the "dummy" mode and output a raw 48-bit file. Ai does no processing in that case and all of the bits available from your scanner (32, 36, or whatever) are saved in the 48-bit file. The you use HDR on that file to do the actuall processing and color correction at which point HDR will output a final 24-bit file. Once again, there's no compromise with this procedure. Which method you use depends on whether you want to process the image right away after the scan (then use Ai) or do it later at your convinience (save a raw file with Ai and then use HDR later). You said you saved a "file for HDR." Then you'd better have HDR to process it. If you don't, then you should be using "36 > 24 color" (or what ever it is, I can't remember). That will allow you to do the processing with Ai and your colors should look a little better.

If you are scanning many negatives, then you should upgrade to version 5.5 ($45 for Ai and another $45 if you have HDR). The upgrade gives you something called NegaFix which is a big improvement over the way your version handles negatives. If you have HDR, then you only need to upgrade HDR as Ai would only be used for raw scans and there's little in the upgrade that would help in Ai if all you use it for is raw scans.

Hope this helps. Send up more specific questions if you have them, and be sure an tell us if you are using HDR or not.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RogerMillerPhoto on 2001-09-04 00:28 ]</font>

[pderocco]

No, I'm not using HDR. However, I like Photoshop, and prefer to use its controls for adjusting the image, since that's what it's for. Often, I try different tweaks before I get it the way I want. In your scenario, I would have to repeat the scan, just to get a file with different adjustments, which is obviously no fun. It makes much more sense to save the raw scanner output as a file, and then do the tweaks nondestructively in Photoshop. I thought that's what 48-bit mode was for.

But I still don't understand why my particular flavor of the version 5 software doesn't support the selection of negative type, which is in other flavors (as well as the manual). What am I supposed to do to get the color right in _this_ version, without buying an upgrade to a new version?

[Tomaz Klinc]

SF v5.5 for Nikon, to be released tomorrow according to President_LSI, will be the first Nikon version to fully support negative scanning. Until now this function was disabled without saying so much.

[RogerMillerPhoto]

Paul, you're using version 5.2, so I recommend you upgade to version 5.5 so that you have NegaFix. The cost is $45. If you have HDR, upgrade only that. If you have only Ai, then upgrade that, but you don't really need to upgrade both. The $45 is really worth it as it does a pretty good job with negatives. As you found out, processing negatives is a lot more difficult than processing slides. Photoshop can do the job, but it isn't easy and NegaFix will save you a lot of time and should get you real close real fast. It sounds like NegaFix is just now becoming available for Nikon.

[LSI_Support]

Dear Paul,
you were wondering why the negative adjustment window is missing in your SilverFast version. Well this is due to the way SilverFast "talks" to that Nikon scanner. In short: with Nikon LS2000 it different then with other scanners that SilverFast supports; and here is were the problem was in your version. The software adjustments you refer to (SilverFast manual) did cause problems when applied on LS2000 scanner, so LaserSoft did remove that function for Nikon scanners (that was by the time of your version). SilverFast 5.2 had limited influence on the LS2000 scanner's internal logic. The LS2000 internal logic again analysed negative film characteristics, thus colliding with SilverFast. Therefore SilverFast let the scanner's logic do the job itself.

[Guest]

I was in same situation like urs until i got hdr, has ur ls2000 got latest firmware?(mine has)
do whatever u can to upgrade buddy to get professional results!

[Tomaz Klinc]

pderocco, sorry I've ever mentioned that Monday.

[pderocco]

I'm a bit reluctant to spend yet another $45 dollars on this program, since the first $400 I spent yielded a piece of software that doesn't do what I thought it would do. (That is, it doesn't seem capable of producing decent negative scans with my particular scanner; it doesn't seem like it can produce color-corrected 48-bit files in Photoshop; and its user interface doesn't seem to be any more efficient or elegant than the freeware that came with the scanner.)

The stuff about the LS-2000 wanting to do its own negative color correction, thus interfering with Silverfast's attempt to do the same, makes no sense to me. Why does Silverfast even bother telling the scanner that it's scanning negatives in the first place? Why can't it just tell the scanner to scan the film as a positive (which it can apparently do without futzing with the color), and then do the negative-to-positive conversion, with mask removal and color correction appropriate to the film type, inside Silverfast?

As to 48-bit scans, is there really no way to get Silverfast to produce a 48-bit color-corrected scan (of anything, positive or negative)? What I want is for the scanner and associated software to produce an accurate rendition of what's on the film, using the profile I created from the IT8 target slide, but do so in 48-bit mode so that I can save a copy, and then make multiple attempts at tweaking the curves, color balance, etc. in Photoshop in 48-bit mode, rather than 24-bit mode. Yet the only 48-bit data I can get out of the software is something that has no color calibration profile applied to it. Am I the only one who regards this as a serious deficiency?