LaserSoft Imaging

Well,
I gave up on Microtek ever releasing an OS X compatible driver for my Artixscan 400t, so I bought Silverfast 6. I have had some OK quality scans but mostly it has been hard work to achieve that. Automatic levels etc all seem wrong. Now I have found some transparencies that I simply cannot get a good scan from:

Here is the URL to a screen grab of Silverfast's prescan of a Kodachrome 64 slide that is maybe half a stop under exposed AT MOST !:

http://www.sharperstill.com/~jonreid/sc ... raight.jpg

Here is the URL to a screen grab of the image in Photoshop after scanning it as HDR:
http://www.sharperstill.com/~jonreid/sc ... nedHDR.jpg

Here is the URL to a screen grab of the image in Photoshop after working it up as best as I can:
http://www.sharperstill.com/~jonreid/scans/best.jpg

Why is it so difficult to get a decent scan of this frame! If I could show you the original I would but shooting it on a lightbox won't be indicative.

Any ideas how to overcome this sort of crap?

Pissed Off,

2sharp

Do you do a lot of Kodachrome scanning or is this one of the first ?

If the latter, welcome to Kodachrome. It can be a real mess to scan. Have you taken a look at Ian's tutorials on HDR scanning ? Do you have an IT8 profile of KC on this scanner ? With KC, i found the IT8 profile can help get me a lot closer, but it depends on the generation of KC that you are working with. Isn't the Artixscan 400t essentially the same scanner as one of the recent Polaroid scanners ? If so, you might try contacting Ian Lyons directly after you have worked through the tutorials, as he has some experience on one of the recent scanners with SF.

www.computer-darkroom.com

Frank

I do a fair bit of Kodachrome scanning. Since I have only recently bought Silverfast I was doing most of it under OS 9 with the Scan Wizard software. Results were mostly fine.
I have worked through the tutorials Ian's site, and have an Ektachrome target from which I've made a profile.

Did a HDR scan, it was the worst of the lot, basically black !
The slide is prob 1/3 to 1/2 under, but I get the feeling it is the rich blue and green that is throwing the scanner.

The Artixscan is the same as the Polaroid 4000 sprintscan I believe...


Grrrrr...

If you are scanning to HDR to do your editing you need to turn on the "for HDR" check box in options and set the gamma you work with. Otherwise it will be very dark.

BTW, a Ektachrome target should not give you good results for Kodachrome. They are very different animals. B&H still has some KC targets, last i checked. That could explain some of the color balance issues if you applied a EK profile. Under exposed, i have found, will make the color balance tough to get right.

Frank

I wouldn't be expecting to buy a target for every type of film I use. I thought the purpose of the target was that it contained known colours and densities, which are compared to a 'map' of those colours and densities... Therefore a target represents a reference point. Why a need for more than one reference point?

Will try HDR again. Tried the same slide at work on a Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED thingy and got a marginally better result (the work computers are crap - no CMS at all, bodgy old monitors etc).

Jon

And nor would i. THere are several "classes" of positive film. An Ektachrome target covers many by the different manufacturers that use a similar dye set and processing. If you wanted as close as possible, you would use a target for each film, but really you just want to characterize the scanners response to that film "class" and get close since there are so many other variables. However, KC's dyes are different from Ektachrome's and will give a different scanner response. THat is one of the reasons Nikon had to create a Kodachrome setting for Nikonscan. Kodachrome has another wrinkle. The dye sets used changed over the years and some of the early KCs were even varnished when processed! If you are working with recent KC, i would expect a target to help you get closer on the first pass. If you PM me your off forum email, i can send you a KC profile for a Nikon CS4000 that has worked reasonably for me and you can see how it does on the work machines. You will have to scan manually and get a raw scan, unless you have SF at work. Most of my KCs are from the late '50s thru the '70s

Frank