LaserSoft Imaging

I am getting scan times of up to two hours with the latest version of Ai 6. The bundled Epson software takes about 20 minutes to scan a 4X5 B&W neg at 4800 dpi in 16 bit grayscale.

Often there are horizontal lines across the image and I need to re-scan. It has got to be some ridiculously simple setting I need to make. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!
JB

Dear Jan,

I suggest to reset Silverfast by deleting its preferences.

On a Windows-PC, please go to

C:\documents and settings\username\application data\lasersoft imaging

and delete the ?prefs?- folder from there.

?username? is whatever username you have on your computer. The ?application data?- folder is hidden by default, so please enable ?view hidden files and folders? in your ?folder options? in case the folder is not shown.

On Macintosh, please go to

Mac HD:/users/username/library/preferences/lasersoft Imaging/silverfast

And delete the prefs- folder as well.

Then, please restart Silverfast. Did this fix the problem ?


--
Regards,

LaserSoft Imaging Inc.
Support Team

Then, please restart Silverfast. Did this fix the problem ?

Dear Jan,

A 4X5 4800 dpi scan is huge. What type of computer are you using; how much RAM and what size and speed hard drive do you have?

Good point !

Please also keep in mind that the scan will take longer, if

- you are scanning in 48 Bit mode
- you have multi-sampling activated
- you have digital ICE activated

Thanks for the sugggestions! I did try trashing the pref files, but am still getting scan times in excess of 2 hours, with horizontal banding. SilverFast for my old Polaroid 45 Ultra film scanner is still installed, and I wonder if that Prefs file might be slowing the process down. I'll try dumping that as well.

The computer is a dual 500 G4 w/1.3 GB of RAM, running under 10.3.9. It has an extra, empty 40 GB hard drive that I recently assigned at the Photoshop scratch disk.

The file sizes with 16 bit grayscale are in the neighborhood of 750 mb, but I downsample after making basic curves and levels adjustments. As I mentioned, the Epson scan software that came with the scanner does a 16 bit grayscale scan in something under 20 minutes. The Polaroid 45 Ultra used to take about that long as well.

Jan B.

Dear Jan,

it's quite likely that SilverFast does perform the grayscale scan in fact as a RGB scan, which can significantly increase scan times. To ensure, that SilverFast will perform a grayscale scan indeed as a real grayscale scan, go to Options->Special->ColorFilter and ensure, that something different than "White" is selected.

Regards
Ralf

Jan,

Just to be sure, you do know that you can make curve and levels adjustments in Silverfast, right?

Many thanks for the suggestion! Changing the "white" option in color filters did the trick, and the scans are back down to a mere 20 minutes.

Jan B.