LaserSoft Imaging

Hello,
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?

Dear tygger

I opened ticket 20070831021225 to proceed your posting internally.
I would some more information before I can put a statement in the forum, so I shall send you another email request for your assistance in this matter.
Thank you in anticipation of your kind co-operation.

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- Manager Technical Support, LaserSoft Imaging AG -

I do fully understand that Silverfast / Lasersoft wishes to have such matters dealt with internally at first.
However - some users may have made the same or a similar experience, just without posting or asking, but rather kicking the Software into the trash.

Unfortunately, such behaviour will seldom, if ever, be disclosed to Lasersoft, so you guys get no chance to understand your customers problems and attitude towards your product. You will only find some day that sales go down, and you will sit there just wondering why this could happen.

As you may appreciate, such problems are of major concern to a majority of your users, as the last versions of Silverfast have emerged to be not really stable and predictive in all-day use.

So your users may - in return - be grateful if you could make up your mind to post solutions to such problems as posted before here in the Forum, making such solutions public to the rest of your user community, just assuming that you might wish to keep your user community in the future, too.

Thanks a lot.

From time to time, I feel really puzzled on how Silverfast keeps on ignoring users wishes and needs and how the people at Silverfast succeed once again in not answering such postings.

What a pity.

I upgraded because of the multi-exposure function the results of which on an Epson 4870 scanner were consistently poor. This is after waiting for several Silverfast revisions for this feature to actually even function. Overall the OEM Epson software in the pro mode consistently gives much better results than Silverfast.

Hi LSI Team

your last feedback to the users has been posted on 2008, August, 31.!
when will the users get any further infos?

kind regards
Dirk

Dear Customer,

I just researched in the opened ticket and sadly the customer has never supplied us with the needed resources,
So that we could help him with this problem.

If you got a similar problem please open a ticket with our support assistent and our techsupport staff will handle the issue.

best regards,

Thomas Luebker,
LaserSoft Imaging AG