Preparing to a major project which would involve a lot of scanning from LF transparencies and negatives I discovered being entitled to upgrade a scanning package which I purchased several years ago for evaluation purposes. Since at that time the other package lost to Silverfast completely I simply forgot about its existance.
I have recently downgraded from version 6.5.1r1 back to more stable and predictable 6.4.2r9 but still decided to give the final version a try versus the other software's final version.
The test was run on Epson V750pro scanner connected to 20" 2.18 Intel iMac with 2.0 Gig of RAM and the scanned material was 4"x5" Kodak Portra NC negative - not the simplest scannable media but still oftenly used by me in architectural assignments because of color neutrality and exposure width.
The other software's not very intuitive interface took some time before figuring out a way to disable image enhancements and setting it to an output of a 3200dpi multiple exposure 48bit tiff file with ICE Quality applied. Color correction was set to none because firstly, I prefer to do it in LAB and secondly, the controls didn't seem very usable.
It took the scanner 21 minutes and 3 passes to produce a 950Mb file:
(The other software's output)
The colors and tonality don't appear right, but I will just have to archive the file for latter work so I import it to Photoshop, transfer to LAB space, run a quick action on degraining and initial sharpening (L: Smart sharpen, R=0.5, A=200; a:G.blur, R=1,5; b:G.blur, R=2.5) and tweak the curves to get this file in 5 minutes:
(The other software's corrected image)
Now it's Silverfast's turn with the same settings: 3200dpi, 48bit, MEX, ICE Quality; Negafix: Other, Other, Standard (the film profiles just don't work), the sliders in Expert mode positoned so there is some empty space around the histograms.
(Not that I think the Epson is capable to resolve 3200dpi, this is just an "allowed" value that lets it perform at its maximum ~2400)
After an hour and a half Silverfast finishes the first round of two passes and ICE processing. I can't get on with it, so I hit "Cancel", nothing happens for three minutes, I force quit and restart Silverfast losing all my settings.
I turn the ICE off and start over. In 35 minutes the file is ready. Drag it to Photoshop(SF crashes, how could I forget that any interaction with Finder is forbidden when SF is running?), same sharpening action:
(Silverfast's output)
It's time to do some color tweaking here.
No, it's not!
This is what the actual pixels reveal:
(The other software's 1:1 crop)
(Silverfast's 1:1 crop)
To the trash goes the file, accompanied by 2 hours of futile attempts to finally make Silverfast work - and Silverfast itself!
Just interested.
WHAT THE ......... HAS HAPPENED WITH THE BEST SCANNING SOFTWARE IN THE WORLD?
