LaserSoft Imaging

Hi,

After being highly recommended I purchased Silverfast (6.4.3r8) for my Nikon LS2000 and so far I've been very disappointed. Negafix just does not work - it always generates underexposed scans with poor color balance. NegDirect scans are fine and are almost identical to scans using Nikonscan3.

Initially Martin at Silverfast tech support was quite helpful but he's since gone quiet and won't return my emails. The examples on the following web page speak for themselves...

If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate the help. If Silverfast tech support are reading this, would you please contact me.

http://www.michaelsmithers.com/pictures ... roblem.htm

Best regards,
Michael
michael.smithers@pobox.com

For the external shot of the brick residence, use the ?find brightest? button to see what Silverfast may be using as the brightest point and colour balancing to this. It may just be picking up on spec of dust. Using the mid tone picker, click on the patch of neutral sand. This should fix the colour cast.

Your final scans appear to be darker than your prescans. The interior shot with the strong reflection in the glass would normal require a lot of correction to bring up the shadows. The camera would have exposed for the reflection, so naturally the rest of the image will be much darker. The prescan should be a faithful representation. Check all the colour management settings. You may have inappropriate profiles selected. The Ian Lyons tutorial on Negafix includes typical settings.

Hi MikeB,

Thanks for the feedback. I should mention that I'm using SE Plus so I don't have access to color profiles explicitly.

For the examples on my website, I'm not applying any of the other tools - just Negafix - so I'm not sure I understand your suggestion of SF exposing to the brightest point.

>> Your final scans appear to be darker..... the prescan should be a faithful representation.

That's exactly one of the problems I'm finding - i.e. that the prescan is NOT a faithful representation. If negafix is on, no matter what corrections or adjustments I do, the final scan is about 2.5 fstops darker than the prescan view!!!!! Using NegDirect or using NikonScan3 doesn't have this problem.

I checked out Ian's tutorial - thanks! Unfortunately it doesn't help. Everything so far points to a bug in SF.

Cheers,
Michael

There will be very few images where NegaFix will give you a well optimised scans without some manual adjustments.

There are number of tutorials that can be downloaded as well as manuals to get you going with the basics:
- setting options/preferences
- finding the brightest/darkest parts of the image
- setting white point, black point, up to 4 mid neutral points
- simple curves adjustments

Yes, it may take a couple of weeks to get your head around all of this.

You could install the full Ai Studio demo version. You will have Silverfast watermarks across the scans, but at least you will see if the final scans are the same as prescans!

I appreciate the help however I still have two questions.

Firstly, why does NegDirect and Nikonscan ALWAYS look better? My understanding is that the whole point of NegaFix is to better match the film type in use. So at a minimum, NegaFix without tweaking should look no worse than with no NegaFix.

Secondly, why does the final scan look SO different to the prescan. Time and time again I end up with scans that are heavily black clipped, despite the prescan (sometimes with tweaking) looking reasonable and the prescan histograms looking unclipped. To me this points to a bug.

Cheers,
Michael

I should add that I also tried a demo version of Ai and found the same problems.

Cheers,
Michael

Here is the link to how to reinstall Silverfast for Nikon scanners:

http://www.silverfast.com/faq/1026/en.html

There are clearly interactions between Nikon 3 and Sliverfast with one overwriting the files of the other depending on installation order.

Double check everything Silverfast has been deleted from your C: drive by searching for ?Silverfast?.

If you wish to put the time in, I would even uninstall Nikon 3.

There would still be some registry entries, but I don?t know how to identify them and remove these.

Start the reinstallation with Nikon 3, then Silverfast.

Once you have overcome the difference between final scans and prescans, Silverfast still may not outperform Nikon Scan without manual adjustments. In the last month I have scanned 400 negatives. Using the Job manager it was much faster than Nikon Scan, and Silverfast has many features like the multiple mid neutral points that just are not available in Nikonscan. On the downside Silverfast has a lot of settings that can confuse, or it can guess really wrong on some images/films and workarounds are required. I find it ?high maintenance?, although it is still the best tool for the job.

Hi,

After starting this thread last year, I've finally set up a dedicated PC for photo editing and returned to scanning my collection of negatives.

However...... I'm still finding that the color cast of Negafix is horrible when compared to both NegDirect and NikonScan3.

Version: SE Plus 6.4.4r6 (latest)
Film types: Various Kodak and Fuji color negative films.
LS2000: firmware 1.31

I emailed back and forth with tech support about 8 months ago and (after much pleading) they acknowledged and fixed a bug where the final scan was a couple of f-stops darker than the prescan. But they didn't appear interested in negafix color problems - I posted lost of photos and I have more.

Has anyone found the same thing?
- I am familiar with all the different settings and options available - please don't email me with NegaFix tutorials
- I have also tried demos of Ai which show the same problem

Any help would be most appreciated,

Michael

there is only one solution to the NegaFix issue: Switch it off! Use NegDirect.
Unfortunatelly Silverfast is charging for this useless feature.