LaserSoft Imaging

No, not Black and White negs. Not film. Not gray scale.

I really want to like Silverfast, honest I do. But after paying my money last week I am having a rough time justifying it.

Last month, my Microtek 6400XL scanner was able to produce crisp, 8-bit black and white scans. I upgraded to OS X Tiger and needed a new driver... but now Silverfast SE turned that same scanner into a 1-bit machine.

I've read the few posts in the 'search' - and the general answer seems to be use Grayscale. I've read the (2 page) PDF and it says the same thing. Gray Scale, Pipette, highlight / shadow. Problem is grayscale picks up other things on the page... such as non-photo blue pencil. And using a curve to eliminate the "tone" of course hurts the line quality (which I wanted to keep hence I bought Silverfast)

Please, please help me out here.

I really want to like Silverfast. Is this a case where I need to upgrade from Silverfast SE to Ai..? Are there functions (not much talked about) that could be hidden under the hood.

Thanks, for any help in advance. I'm not trying to be a hard nose about this, or a jerk. I'm just looking to scan black and white art... and the majority of everything on the forum(s) is about color or scanning black & white film / negs, newspaper, or print text.

Hello Jimmykitty,

I understand you are stuck. I purchased the "SilverFast: Official Guide" and offer the following excerpt in an effort to help you.

Source: "SilverFast: Official Guide" page 13
"Both grayscale and line-art images are commonly used to reproduce black-and-white images, but grayscale mode is appropriate for photographs and anything else with a range of tonal values, whereas line-art mode is used mainly for reproduction of drawings or other high-contrast artwork."

Based on this and other information in the guide I'd say give "1 Bit Line Art" a try. It is located on the scan type menu. Make sure to scan at your scanners optical resolution for the best results. (Keep in mind this is intended for simple line art, and that grayscale is better for line art with complex detail)

For more information buy the "SilverFast: Official Guide? Chapter 9 covers Line art, but there is other supporting information in the book.

Hope this helps you!

Okay, today I'll try 1-Bit Line Art at my scanner's highest resolution. I'll also attempt another grayscale manipulation.

Crossing my fingers. I need this scanner - not just for a single image... but for HUNDREDS. I really need streamline production where I can feel confident about placing an ink drawing on the scanner and not have to worry too much about each and every page.

The art is sketched in non-photo blue pencil, then finished in black ink. In the past the same scanner would drop the non-photo blue in Line Art mode, while keeping a solid threshold for the black & white.

If all fails to my satisfaction I may have to revert to my old Mac OS (10.2) just to run the scanner driver that works the best.

Thanks for your reply.

Just to be clear, you should use the highest optical resolution Vs the highest resolution to avoid interpolation.

Good luck!