LaserSoft Imaging

I've been studying SilverFast SE and SilverFast Ai Studio for three days in order to set up for a large scanning effort, and I am confused about options and confused about the mouse. It's a daunting product, but looks extremely promising for my job. I've spent time reading the manuals, and experimenting, and I am now out at sea needing help. (Windows XP SP3, Epson V700, and latest SilverFast downloads.)

First, the mouse. I delete all frames (to start fresh) and do a prescan. The manual says I can draw a frame by clicking and dragging the mouse. I try, but nothing at all happens except the cursor changes from a hand to a box-with-arrow. No frame gets drawn. I can get frames only by clicking frame auto-find (which is very imperfect with my Epson slide holder) or by clicking the frame slide-holder finder, and the mouse will draw frames afterward, but it won't draw frames on a freshly previewed scan with no frames present. (I can work with this, but it is confounding to a new user to be unable to draw frames.)

Second, options. Here I am terribly confused, trying to sort out when adjustments are applied (during batch scan or when pressing buttons on the main SilverFast dialog). Here is what I think might be happening, and I'd like this clarified. The Options->Auto dialog is setting the parameters that are used by the "Auto-Adjust" button on the main SilverFast dialog and by the frame-find buttons on the preview window. These auto-adjust values will be applied to the part of an image inside a frame in the following three cases: (1) the user presses AutoAdjust while a pre-scanned frame is active; (2) the user presses AutoAdjust on a frame, saves the frame set, and, later, loads that frame set and does prescanning using that frame set; and (3) the user presses "Automatic for batch" in the Options->Auto dialog, defines any frames whatsoever, and does a batch-mode scan (regardless of whether the frames have the AutoAdjust button pressed). Is this accurate?

Third, what is the relation between "ACR when Automatic" in the Auto->Options dialog and "ACCO" in the preview window? Do the ACCO settings for strength, shadow width, and saturation affect the "ACR when Automatic" operation? ACCO applies only to the frame in which it is used. What sets the ACR parameters?

My reaction to this software is that it is excellent, but before I set out to scan thousands of slides I need to understand it better. Help with points two and three above will be more than welcome.

Dear BigBatch

BigBatch wrote:First, the mouse. I delete all frames (to start fresh) and do a prescan. The manual says I can draw a frame by clicking and dragging the mouse. I try, but nothing at all happens except the cursor changes from a hand to a box-with-arrow. No frame gets drawn. I can get frames only by clicking frame auto-find (which is very imperfect with my Epson slide holder) or by clicking the frame slide-holder finder, and the mouse will draw frames afterward, but it won't draw frames on a freshly previewed scan with no frames present. (I can work with this, but it is confounding to a new user to be unable to draw frames.)

You can not draw frames within another frame, when you delete all frames and make a prescan, the entire scan area is contained within a frame (note the red border that defines a frame), what you can do there is drag one of the corners to resize the big frame.

BigBatch wrote:(1) the user presses AutoAdjust while a pre-scanned frame is active; (2) the user presses AutoAdjust on a frame, saves the frame set, and, later, loads that frame set and does prescanning using that frame set; and (3) the user presses "Automatic for batch" in the Options->Auto dialog, defines any frames whatsoever, and does a batch-mode scan (regardless of whether the frames have the AutoAdjust button pressed). Is this accurate?

This is accurate, you got it all right. There are, however, other options under the "Auto" tab like "Auto IT8 calibration" or "custom ICC profile names" which are not related to the Auto-Adjust button but to the IT8 calibration option.

BigBatch wrote:Third, what is the relation between "ACR when Automatic" in the Auto->Options dialog and "ACCO" in the preview window? Do the ACCO settings for strength, shadow width, and saturation affect the "ACR when Automatic" operation? ACCO applies only to the frame in which it is used. What sets the ACR parameters?

ACR and AACO are two completely different tools.

ACR (adaptive color restoration pg. 179) basically manages the color saturation allowing you to saturate faded out colors or desaturate oversaturated colors.

AACO (Auto adaptive contrast optimization pg 399) allows you to correct the contrast of an image while preserving detail in the highlights. When you open the AACO dialogue, you will see the correction which will be applied only to the frame you are working with, its effect will be seen only while this dialogue is opened, as soon as you press "OK" the preview will return to the previous picture but the AACO will have a green background which means it is active and will be applied to the endscan.

Cheers

Thanks; you've nicely cleared up my questions above. I had seen page 179 but lost it in my growing confusion. But now I am even more stumped. I have uninstalled SilverFast completely (including a registry check and a look for any SilverFast folders) and reinstalled it twice, but I remain stumped.

I am trying to scan slides, Kodachrome, and set the General tab settings to Normal(File), Transparency, Kodachrome, Save. I run a prescan, get a frame drawn around a slide, and press scan: the result is dreadfully blue, and looks nothing like what is shown on the preview. I have touched no automatic button since install. Subsequently I try lots of adjustments, and each time screen looks good and reflects the adjustment, but each time the scan button produces a file with quite different colors.

What is going on is likely something to do with ICM (WinXP SP3; Epson V700). If I go to Options->CMS and set Internal->Monitor to <None>, then the preview display matches what is actually scanned. What I think I am trying to do, then, is to have Internal->Monitor set to ImageColourMatching(ICM) and to have the scan actually look like what I see in the preview. I have tried checking and unchecking EmbedICCprofile but there is no change to the appearance of the scanned output file. Photoshop Elements (an old version), Paint Shop Pro (two different versions), QImage (a photo printing program), and Firefox all show the actual output scanned file the same way, and the newer PaintShopPro tells me it does detect the embedded ICM settings in the case where I asked SilverFast to embed them.

I have tried using the zoom, which causes my scanner to do a rescan of the zoomed area (I set the HighResolutionPrescan value to 1 to cause the rescan), and the preview looks good, and yet when I hit scan from this freshly created preview window I still get the differing output file coloration.

So this is today's vast confusion: how do I get the scanned output to look like the scanned preview?