Different HDROutputs - SF Ai Studio 6.6.1r1 - MAC (M vs. SF)

[johnny.moped]

Hi,

I am using Silverfast Ai Studio 6.6.1r1 on a Macbook Pro (latest Leopard-Version) with a Nikon Coolscan V ED for HDR-Scans of my negatives.
The rest of the editing is done in Photoshop (ColorNeg-Plugin - http://www.colorneg.de or http://www.c-f-systems.com/Plug-ins.html#plugdesc for the english website).

Today i found out, that there are to versions of Silverfast Ai Studio available:
- The M-Version (NikonM) that uses the Nikon-Drivers (as far as i understood)
- The SF-Version (NikonSF) that uses Silverfast-Drivers and gives me iSRD instead of ICE (by the way, why is the scanner described as SCSI in the options?)

After installing the new (SF) version (i have used the M-version so far) my ColorNeg-Plugin gave me not as good colors as it used to do.
So I installed the M-version as well and scanned the same negative with both Silverfast-Versions.
The ColorNeg-Plugin needs "true" 16bit linear-scans, so both version have the "for HDR-Output"-gamma-option unchecked.
The scan itself is done in negative mode and 48bit HDR.
When i open both (HDR-)images in Photoshop the look very different.
How is that possible? The Settings are exactly the same in both versions.
Shouldn't this data just be unprocessed data from the scanner and therefore pretty much the same?

Normally i wouldn't complain, but the SF-HDR-output does not get a long with my plugin (the colors from an M-HDR are way better!!).
On the other side iSRD gives me better dust- and scratches-handling (except some odd artefacts in high resolution scans, but this will be another thread).

I would be very thankful if someone would explain all this to me. I wouldn't want switch over to v**s**n to do my HDR-scans.

best regards,

daniel

P.S. While I'm talking about the two Mac-Versions:
Why does it take Silverfast so much longer to get the overview-images in the SF-version? it's about six short scans in this version.
It was/is way faster in the M-version, which just scans the whole negative at once and then displays the previews (i'm using the filmfeeder).

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[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear johnny.moped,
the two HDR scans are different as the NikonM scan is not *really* a raw scan because the Nikon MAID driver already applies a pre-processing profile to the date which we cannot suppress.
So the NikonSF raw scan is the "true" raw scan.
Nevertheless it is not good that your negative scans get worse obviously !
Please tell me how do you do the neg --> pos conversion ?
I would assume that you do a lot of HDR scans and then process them via HDR, right ?
Or do you *not* use HDR and directly process to positive in the Ai version ?

best regards,

Nils Heidorn

P.S. yes, the overview takes longer as Nikon uses a special and quite cryptic way of doing a fast, lowres scan of the whole strip in one go.
This is very hard to replicate but maybe we get it done in one of the next versions. For now this is the price of not using the MAID driver on the latest OSX versions

[johnny.moped]

Hi,

thanks for the answer.
I'm only scanning HDRs and do the conversion in Photoshop with help of the ColorNeg-Plugin (link in my first post).
The developer of the plugin already helped me out and now it's working again.
The "problem" was/is this strange SFprofT-Profile that is embedded in the HDR-File (and that the profile-warning in photoshop was switched to "off" ).
Though the unprocessed RAWs still look different in Photoshop, discarding this profile or assigning my working-profile (adobe rgb) gives me the same results as with the old Silverfast-version.

So the only question is, why does Silverfast embed this profile although adobe-rgb is set in Silverfast's cms-settings?

best regards,

daniel

[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear daniel,
if a HDR is scanned, the image is left untouvhed and so the RGB data is still in the device specific "flavour" of RGB.
So the only correct choice is to attach that devices profile to the image.
Thats what we do

best regards,

Nils Heidorn

[johnny.moped]

Ok, ich think this makes kind of sense.

BUT: why is the Adobe RGB Profile embedded when scanned without iSRD?
this makes no sense.

regards,

daniel

[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear daniel,
the profile only cares for the RGB data, not for the Infrared data, so whenever you scan HDR data ( no matter if 48 or 64 Bit ) the scanner profile needs to be attached !

best regards,

Nils Heidorn