PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2002 11:20 pm
I'm developing this workflow with negatives:
1) After prescan, use the exposure slider in the NegaFix box to make the screen shot look as good as possible.
2) Open the NegaFix expert dialogue and monkey with the auto tolerance slider. Values from the previous session seem to carry over with this function, so I drag the slider all the way to the right and then back again to start over. I usually settle on the slider about 1/3 from the left just on the basis of visual feedback, primarily from highlight areas.
3) After closing the NegaFix expert, I click the Auto button. This appears to work a lot like auto levels in Photoshop. The only instance in which I felt this did not improve (usually only just a tiny bit) the output was a negative of the sun setting.
4) I usually check the Levels button to back off the white and black sliders a couple points. I've since concluded that SF is already smart enough not to clip too much, so I am starting to skip this step.
5) The Curves tool is where I live. I really love this tool, particularly the sliders that make it so easy to concentrate on various tonalities within the image. I usually do not change the contrast slider. More often than not I drag the highlight slider to the left about 15-20 points. This makes the whites less "hot" and more detailed. Sometimes I drag the shadow slider to the left to open shadows a bit, but very often I drag it right to deepen and improve contrast. The bottom slider seems to balance the effect of the other adjustments by just tweaking it a few points either way. The Curves tool is wonderful and has really taught me a lot about how to use a curves tool more effectively.
6) Ian Lyons touted the Global Correction tool in his tutorial, and I find that I don't need it a lot, but when I do, it is really useful.
7) After running the scan, there isn't a lot to do in Photoshop, but I usually set the points in levels, and monkey with the contrast in curves.
I don't know if this is useful to anyone. I hope if anyone has questions or suggestions, they will respond. I have used Nikonscan in the past (previous scanner) and then switched to v**s**n when it became available. I really appreciated what v**s**n did for me, but I sort of hit a wall with it. I could get quite good scans up to a point, and then I would cease to know how to improve my images beyond a modest skill set in Photoshop. People claim that Silverfast is hard to learn, but I actually think that it leads one along a natural workflow through which one learns a great deal about improving one's images. The result is just more photographic than anything I've been able to achieve before.
Joel W.
1) After prescan, use the exposure slider in the NegaFix box to make the screen shot look as good as possible.
2) Open the NegaFix expert dialogue and monkey with the auto tolerance slider. Values from the previous session seem to carry over with this function, so I drag the slider all the way to the right and then back again to start over. I usually settle on the slider about 1/3 from the left just on the basis of visual feedback, primarily from highlight areas.
3) After closing the NegaFix expert, I click the Auto button. This appears to work a lot like auto levels in Photoshop. The only instance in which I felt this did not improve (usually only just a tiny bit) the output was a negative of the sun setting.
4) I usually check the Levels button to back off the white and black sliders a couple points. I've since concluded that SF is already smart enough not to clip too much, so I am starting to skip this step.
5) The Curves tool is where I live. I really love this tool, particularly the sliders that make it so easy to concentrate on various tonalities within the image. I usually do not change the contrast slider. More often than not I drag the highlight slider to the left about 15-20 points. This makes the whites less "hot" and more detailed. Sometimes I drag the shadow slider to the left to open shadows a bit, but very often I drag it right to deepen and improve contrast. The bottom slider seems to balance the effect of the other adjustments by just tweaking it a few points either way. The Curves tool is wonderful and has really taught me a lot about how to use a curves tool more effectively.
6) Ian Lyons touted the Global Correction tool in his tutorial, and I find that I don't need it a lot, but when I do, it is really useful.
7) After running the scan, there isn't a lot to do in Photoshop, but I usually set the points in levels, and monkey with the contrast in curves.
I don't know if this is useful to anyone. I hope if anyone has questions or suggestions, they will respond. I have used Nikonscan in the past (previous scanner) and then switched to v**s**n when it became available. I really appreciated what v**s**n did for me, but I sort of hit a wall with it. I could get quite good scans up to a point, and then I would cease to know how to improve my images beyond a modest skill set in Photoshop. People claim that Silverfast is hard to learn, but I actually think that it leads one along a natural workflow through which one learns a great deal about improving one's images. The result is just more photographic than anything I've been able to achieve before.
Joel W.