LaserSoft Imaging

I just purchased a epson 1680 it comes with ai5 and monaco ez colour.how do i use these applications together?? do I profile my scannner with the it8s from silverfast and then calibrate from monaco ez colour . Its all so unclear for a novice like myself. Any help would be great
will anderson

Dear Will,
you only need ONE profile for your Scanner, and as SilverFast holds the tool to generate such a profile, go for it.

hi will
this is one of the most difficult areas of the digital thing (profiles and matching scan to monitor to print) and LSI's reply was not very helpful to me, as i imagine it was not to you either. i have the same setup, and i've spent months of frustrating testing, spent hundreds of dollars in ink and paper and classes and books and feel i am only a little closer to understanding it. basically, i have the colorvision spyder to profile my monitor: i re do this monthly. i use color sync (mac) and make sure this profile is selected. then i profile the printer with the monaco software: print out the test pattern, scan it back in, and that becomes your printer profile. check to make sure that this is selected in color sync also. be sure to wait a full day between printing the test pattern and scanning it in, the inks dry down rather radically on my printer; you want to compare to the final state, not an intermediate one. also, you need to make a profile for each type of paper and or print dpi. (for epson printers) set print software to printer color management, and then in the print software select the calibrated paper profile. i use the supplied epson twain software for the scanning as the silverfast doesnt have clear instructions on how to disable color management intrusions. the instructions for the it8 calibration are inscrutable to me, and since i shoot 99% neg film its useless to me anyway. in fact, i usually use the epson software because it _appears_ that i can import a raw 16 bit file into photoshop, something i dont think i have been able to do with silver fast. though who knows? the instructions are completely opaque to me. i dont understand why anyone would use the silverfast image editing feature since you cant adequately (full screen, actual pixels, 4x5 @ 3200ppi) see what you are doing, as you can w/photoshop. good luck, and contact me if you have more questions.
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM MODERATOR OR OTHERS ABOUT SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS TO THE ISSUES REGARDING USING THE SCANNER SOFTWARE: I AM HERE TO LEARN, NOT JUST GRIPE! THANKS!

dontlikedigital wrote:hi will
... the instructions for the it8 calibration are inscrutable to me, and since i shoot 99% neg film its useless to me anyway. in fact, i usually use the epson software because it _appears_ that i can import a raw 16 bit file into photoshop, something i dont think i have been able to do with silver fast. though who knows? the instructions are completely opaque to me. i dont understand why anyone would use the SilverFast image editing feature since you cant adequately (full screen, actual pixels, 4x5 @ 3200ppi) see what you are doing, as you can w/photoshop. good luck, and contact me if you have more questions.
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM MODERATOR OR OTHERS ABOUT SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS TO THE ISSUES REGARDING USING THE SCANNER SOFTWARE: I AM HERE TO LEARN, NOT JUST GRIPE! THANKS!

Dear dontlikedigital,
as it seems you are new to SilverFast, too. In fact SilverFast does offer 16bit scanning as long as you don't use SilverFast SE edition.

Furthermore, you might expect SilverFast's IT8 function to solve your problems with your printer, well: SilverFast's IT8 calibration can ONLY generate input profiles (scanner profiles)
What SilverFast's CMS dialog offers is that you can embed printer profiles right into the scanned image, if you rely for the output on your operating systems color management (ColorSync).