Polaroid 120 focus problems

[tokolosh]

I have always been a little disappointed in the focus of my polaroid sprintscan 120. Mostly I use the glassless carriers for 35 and 120 film. I bought the glass carrier to help flatten the film but it didnt help much. I was also told that SF didn't support the glass holder - is this true ?
I was using SF 6.0.1 and Photoshop 7 and Win98SE and 48 biit (16) col.

A few days ago I upgraded to WinXP and Photoshop CS and upgraded SF Ai to 6.2.2. My first scans show a great improvement in sharpness - has anyone else experienced this? Can anyone explain to me what is going on?

Please dont write that I must use the sharpening filters. I know about that but prefer to do sharpening in Photoshop after other editing. I'm talking about the basic first scan.

Thank you.

[LSI_Noack]

Dear Tokolosh

although I read you don't want to hear about it, I simply can't resist pointing out that SilverFast does sharpen in LAB, and Photoshop doesn't, AFAIK.

This means SilverFast being able to sharpen the brightness values individually, which usually leads to better sharpening results than if you sharpen in color channels.

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- tech support, LSI AG -

[tokolosh]

Thank you for writing back.

I am not trying to argue which program does better sharpening.

1.My first question again , put another way, is it possible that an SF Ai upgrade (6.2.2 from 6.01) could make the difference of better focus with the Polaroid 120 Sprintscan & 35mm film strip holder ?

It is not mentioned in the development history of the different versions.

I was using Win98SE and PS7 and SF Ai 6.01 & 35mm film strip holder - and now I have WinXP Pro and PS CS/8 and SF Ai 6.2.2 & 35mm film strip holder, and I noticed better focus on the film - without using any sharpening filter.

2. Does SF Ai support the polaroid glass film holder now ? I was told by Lasersoft some time ago that it does not ?

[Robertson]

I have already read a post on this topic but did not see a full answer
to the problem.
Polacolor Insight software has a patch to enable correct focussing
when the Glass Carrier is being used.
Does Silverfast have a similar patch which can be loaded to fix the
proble without having to resort to "sharpening" etc.
thanks

[tokolosh]

do you know where to find this patch for the glass carrier in Insight that you refer to ? I did a search without success

[Robertson]

Hi

Check out the link below - it's about a 11.4mb file and when
loaded should enable the SS 120 scanner to focus properly with the
glass carrier.

Cheers

Rob


http://www.polaroid.com/service/softwar ... ss120.html

[kevio]

Maybe I'm not understanding what you wrote. But if you are saying that Photoshop can't sharpen the brightness channel while in Lab mode you are wrong. I'm not sure about V7 but CS can. You can also do it in RGB mode by applying the sharpen or USM and then going up to "Edit->Fade Unsharp Mask" and then selecting "Luminosity" under the "Mode" tab. You can also create a duplicate layer and apply a High Pass Filter to it. Then set the layer mode to "Hard Light" and adjust the layer Opacity.

Dear Tokolosh

although I read you don't want to hear about it, I simply can't resist pointing out that SilverFast does sharpen in LAB, and Photoshop doesn't, AFAIK.

This means SilverFast being able to sharpen the brightness values individually, which usually leads to better sharpening results than if you sharpen in color channels.

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- tech support, LSI AG -