Single best SF enhancement
PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 1:44 pm
I have been using SilverFast Ai Studio with my Nikon CoolScan V since 2005, first as a Photoshop plugin and later as a standalone program in conjunction with SF HDR (Archive Suite). I am a huge fan of the Archive Suite, but have always found that the biggest stumbling block in working with this incredibly deep and powerful system is the lack of thorough, authoritative, and detailed yet clear guidance for its use: Instead, long-suffering users struggled with a patchwork of relatively incomplete documentation on all fronts that was allowed to become woefully out of date.
So it is with considerable excitement and pleasure that I have been working my way methodically through your newly-available comprehensive users' manual, the SilverFast 8 Handbook, by Mark Segal. I do not hesitate in declaring that right along with ME, I find this to be the SINGLE BEST PROGRAM ENHANCEMENT I have experienced in all my years as a SF user! Although it is specific to this latest version--and one of the key reasons, incidentally, that I decided to go ahead and buy the upgrade--it has served to unlock for me, at long last, the mysteries of many aspects of the program that I have never used because I didn't know how to approach them. The presentation and organization over the 380 pages is absolutely exemplary: thisbook is a model of what such a manual should be. I am particularly impressed with the inclusion of the all the suggested alternate workflows involving various combinations of SF, SF HDR, Lightroom, and Photoshop.
Congratulations to you and to Mr Segal on this landmark step forward! And now your challenge: keep it current, please! In this age of PDFs, the cost of publishing updated manuals has plummeted. Have mercy on your user base and implement, in conjunction with the author, a system to produce regularly revised editions--or at the very least frequent addenda--available free of charge to every book purchaser until the next major rewrite (which would presumably coincide with the release of the next major version).
So it is with considerable excitement and pleasure that I have been working my way methodically through your newly-available comprehensive users' manual, the SilverFast 8 Handbook, by Mark Segal. I do not hesitate in declaring that right along with ME, I find this to be the SINGLE BEST PROGRAM ENHANCEMENT I have experienced in all my years as a SF user! Although it is specific to this latest version--and one of the key reasons, incidentally, that I decided to go ahead and buy the upgrade--it has served to unlock for me, at long last, the mysteries of many aspects of the program that I have never used because I didn't know how to approach them. The presentation and organization over the 380 pages is absolutely exemplary: thisbook is a model of what such a manual should be. I am particularly impressed with the inclusion of the all the suggested alternate workflows involving various combinations of SF, SF HDR, Lightroom, and Photoshop.
Congratulations to you and to Mr Segal on this landmark step forward! And now your challenge: keep it current, please! In this age of PDFs, the cost of publishing updated manuals has plummeted. Have mercy on your user base and implement, in conjunction with the author, a system to produce regularly revised editions--or at the very least frequent addenda--available free of charge to every book purchaser until the next major rewrite (which would presumably coincide with the release of the next major version).
