LaserSoft Imaging

Perhaps I have misunderstood:

My Microtek Scanmaker-5 allows for 12 35mm negatives (2 strips of 6 each) to be inserted into the film holder. I perform an overall prescan and then use the selection tool to select individual frames. I input these to the job manager.

To edit individual frames, I select the frame in JM and then use the magnifier tool to do an enlarged prescan of the individual frame. I save the edited prescan and move to another.

All that I have read leads me to believe I can come back to the previously edited image and make additional edits without having to prescan it again. It has been saved. But this doesn't seem to be the case. If I want to get the enlarged view of a previously edited image back into the edit window, I have to scan it again.

Windows 98SE on a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4. Lots of memory and disk space.

Thanks.

George Butch
Plantation, FL

That is correct, SilverFast will not save more than just one preview (of the last edited image).

Hello again,

Please forgive me but I remain confused. Much of what I have learned about Silverfast comes from the instructional tutorials on Ian Lyons website, "Computer Darkroom".

On page 7 of his tutorial #5 on the Job Manager, now incorporated into my version of Silverfast AI for the Mickotek Scanmaker 5, I find the following statement:

"Note:!

Even after saving the "Job" it is still possible to re-edit any single or group of images making up the "Job". It's simply a matter of selecting the image and pressing the "Edit" button. However, this time round the scanner does NOT need to pre-scan the image since a copy of each pre-scan has been saved to your hard disk. Of course, after re-editing we must again save the "Job"."

Am I misinterpreting this statement? Is it not applicable to my version of Silverfast or my scanner? Or is Mr. Lyons mistaken?

Thank You again.

George Butch
Plantation, FL

The statement is correct, once you saved a job you can always re-open it. However, when you use the JM on a scanner directly (I just experienced this) the re-opening of a saved job only applies to re-opens within the same session. Once you Quit SilverFast the saved Job is lost.

Only when working in SilverFast HDR with the JM you can reopen saved jobs even in a following session.

Hello again,

All of my observations are of operation within a single session of Silverfast Ai v6.0.1r16 for the Microtek Scanmaker-5.

The initial prescan is of the entire negative carrier. 12 images in two strips of six each. What I am trying to do within the Job Manager is to save the enlarged previews of the individually edited selections so that I can examine my edits one more time prior to the final scan.

It does not appear I can do this. I must once again perform enlarged prescans of each individual frame.

I don't want to beat the topic to death, but if this operation is the norm, then I fail to see the advantage of using the Job Manager instead of the batch scan technique I used in the previous version of SF Ai.

Thank You.

George Butch...

With all of the work and experimentation I have done with SilverFast over the last year, I can tell you that there is almost no advantage to using the Job Manager. The 'promise' is that it will save you time but that is not entirely true because the user is required to preview every single image before they can make even the simplest of adjustments such as naming the output image files or changing their orientations (although this parameter can copied from one image to all other images in need of adjustment).

SilverFast has a hangover from the days when it was only used by 'Professional' photographers, those people who selectively scan photographs for publication. It was not designed to do bulk processing of photographs. The following aspects of SilverFast prove this:

1. until late December when the bug was finally fixed, the Job Manager required a preview of every frame in the queue before it would process them correctly.

2.SF HDR cannot batch scan a folder of images. the only way to scan a folder of images is to use the Job Manager which can only see and add the images from one folder level at a time.

3. there is no way to produce multiple output sizes for a batch of images with one operation. frame sets can not be used in combination with multiple image batch scanning. so there is no way to produce; for example; 640 x 480, 1200 x 800 and RAW images at the same time.

3. there are no automatic numbering options when using the Job Manager.

4. the numbering options when Batch Scanning are almost non-existent.

5. there is no automatic detection of image edges. my wife and I have begun scanning company documents. if SilverFast had automatic detection of image edges, we could scan our documents much quicker without the need to preview and adjust the framing for each document one at a time.

(there is also no option to produce 1-bit dithered images although this is very much a document related function rather than a photograph related function. 1-bit dithered images are much smaller than greyscale images, and print very well even through fax communications.)


People are still comparing SilverFast to the $40 v**s**n. There is good reason for this. Just compare the numbering and naming options as a starter.

SilverFast *could* be the star of scanning if they could just make it a more productive and efficient application to use rather than trying to create more and more Photoshop functionality.

more another time.

one last note of relevance to the original post. I believe version 6 of SF Ai introduced saved multiple previews. Before v6, only the current preview was saved. Each time the 'edit' frame was changed, a new preview needed to be generated.

regards
Gregory