LaserSoft Imaging

Haven't shot film in about two decades, but just ran out and got a toyo field and have started shooting 4x5. Been working digitally for a few years, so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of workflow, color management and so forth.

Except something's wrong.

Just got my first batch of ektar 100 back from the lab, set up my epson v700 and fired up silverfast. I scanned at 1200ppi, 48 bit, and used the correct negafix settings. When I open the files in PS, they have SFprofT (PerfectionV700).icc as the profile, and look terrible. I convert to ProPhoto and have been trying to correct, but the initial scan is so far off in terms of color balance that I simply can't get a decent image. The image has a severe green/cyan cast and is terribly blue in the shadows. What am I doing wrong? It looks like the scanner is tagging the image with the correct icc profile - I've even tried assigning various Epson profiles but they look no better.
Using the 48 bit option, the color and tone correction tools disappear. The only option is to scan, which I did and got the following image (inverted, which I de-inverted in PS):


I tried to correct in PS, but it is so far off I can't get a reasonable color balance. I've gotten slightly better results using Epson Scan, but still not perfect. Can anyone walk me through their workflow for scanning negs?

Many thanks

Dear Jonathan

You are scanning in 48 bit HDR mode. You use this scanning mode to create raw files, it means unmodified pictures. The inversion of the film will not take place.
When you open the resulting file in photoshop you have an exact copy of your negative including the orange mask of the film base, in such cases it is not enough to just "invert" the image because you need to eliminate the orange mask.

In that case it would be better to use 48 bit color (not HDR) so the inversion of the film takes place during the scanning process.

Cheers

Hi,

I get similar results when scanning color negatives as negative transparents. I have set the 48->24bit as color mode, I'm not using HDRi setting. The blue tint is visible in the preview and in the final scans. It's possible to get rid of the blue off by fiddling the settings in NegaFix section. But for example the Auto setting (for automatic film base detection) seems to get affected by the framing and earlier film strips etc.

With black and white negative scans I get pink/purple color cast unless I use either of the greyscale color modes. And the 16->8bit greyscale mode seems to get poorer results than scanning with 48->32bit color mode (and turning frames into monochrome in Photoshop with Channel Mixer).

Generally, I've gotten the feeling, after using SilverFast SE for 7 months regularly, that it's impossible to find decent settings and get static results. I wish I could find a solution and good instructions on how the software should be used correctly.


/Minna

PS. I have Epson V700 and I have SilverFast SE 6.6.1r6 running in Mac OS X 10.6.4.

Dear Mina

perminna wrote:The blue tint is visible in the preview and in the final scans. It's possible to get rid of the blue off by fiddling the settings in NegaFix section. But for example the Auto setting (for automatic film base detection) seems to get affected by the framing and earlier film strips etc.

As a matter of fact the only way SilverFast has to know what part should be adjusted is through the scanning frame, when you change the size of the frame or its content, its histogram will consequently change.

To avoid having the blue tint, you should not include any of the surrounding parts of the negative into the selection frame but only image details.

perminna wrote:With black and white negative scans I get pink/purple color cast unless I use either of the greyscale color modes.

Have you tried moving the Auto tolerance slider to the right, to see if cast is removed?

perminna wrote:And the 16->8bit greyscale mode seems to get poorer results than scanning with 48->32bit color mode (and turning frames into monochrome in Photoshop with Channel Mixer).

Well, you can not blame SilverFast for what you want to achieve, SilverFast has no way of knowing what kind of modification you want.
If you switch to black and white scanmode, you will find a grey matrix which can be used to modify the individual channels to obtain the desired results.

perminna wrote:I wish I could find a solution and good instructions on how the software should be used correctly.

We have a wealth of information for free on our site movies can be found here: http://www.silverfast.com/mov/en.html
And pdf documents and user manual here: http://www.silverfast.com/documentation/en.html

Cheers