LaserSoft Imaging

Hi,
I was asked if I could scan two slides of sunsets through clouds by a local art teacher and I told her no problem. When the images are viewed through a slide viewer there is quite a bit of "color" (wide histogram) but they are very dark in general. When I scan them they come out really muddy and washed out looking. I am scanning them on an Epson 4870 and using PS CS2 for post processing and I'll be darned if I can get them to come out as vibrant as the originals no matter what I do to them in PhotoShop. I realibrated my scanner and that didn't help and have used every trick I could find in the forum.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Steve,

In order to attempt helping I need to know the following at a minimum:

1) Film type DIN/ISO/ASA
2) NegaFix settings if any
3) General SilverFast settings used if any

Have you used the gradation tool (curves) to adjust tonality or did you just use the automatic adjustments?

As a test try the Epson Scan software and if you are able to get good results you should be able to improve on the quality with SilverFast by using the correct settings and adjustments.

RAG,
Thanks for responding!

I spent several hours on the slides last night and finally got an OK output, not good but OK.

One slide is Ektachorme 100 and the other Kodachrome 64. I scanned them both with Epson Scan first and none of the reds and oranges of the sunset came through so I was sure that SilverFast would help things out.

All scans were 48bit @ 2400dpi. I tried manual settings, auto settings one at a time, I tried ICE on and off, multiple passes (up to 8 passes) and nothing really helped. I am a decent PhotoShop hack so I took the scans with the "best" histograms into PhotoShop and with a combination of Curves and adjusting each color separately in Hue/Saturation I was able to bring back some but not all of the reds and oranges.

If you can think of anything else that I should have tried please let me know.

Thanks again for asking.

Steve,

Did you try different NegaFix settings in SilverFast? I have found that playing with them yeilds a better starting point some times.

You may need a slide scanner or a drum scanner . Most entry level flatbeds will not reach down into the darkest portions of the slide. My Nikon CS4000 has trouble some times and it's pretty good. A decent digital repro service can probably get you a couple scans with a drum scanner for reasonable $ on a CD and then you can work with it in PS if you need to.

RAG - I tried tricking the scanner into thinking these images were on negatives instead of transparencies but it got too complex to invert the scanned images.

Degrub - I think your right about having these slides scanned by a service if I want decent color. It really irritates me that people gave the 4870 such rave reviews and yet I have never gotten decent scans with sunsets or other "extreme" images.

Again thanks for the help guys!

Have a look at Margules latest book about exactly that tone problem - he advocates scanning into Lab space and making corrections there. Won't overcome the physical limitations of the scanner, but may give you a better result.

degrub,
I finally got around to try scanning in Lab space and it helped. It wasn't as good as I thought it should have been but the artist I scanned the slides for was delighted.

I will pick up Margulis' books and check it out too.

I have a problem... 6-8K slides that I need to convert to digital format. I just purchased a Minolta Scan Elite 5400 II (could I have asked for better timing?) and I don't seem to be able to reproduce what I see when I use a projector digitally. I also own a copy of Photoshop 7 (full version) but I'm don't understand color or the tools to fix it.

All my scanned slides are much darker than what I see using a slide projector. I'm amazed at the detail of the scanned file (and the 200Mb file size.) Still, it would seem that there ought to be a simple way to change the "starting point." The film negatives seem fine.

I've never used a darkroom or taken a course in photography. What can Silverfast software do to help me. Which version should I consider if I'm going to be converting 6-8K slide to digital format.

I also want to use the 16bit color option of the scanner and I would like to store the images in three formats (uncompressed Tiff, JPEG-minimum compression maximum size, and JPEG size that will display on current DVD players.) I'm converting these slides so they can be enjoyed by my grandkids someday thus I want to save as much detail as possible. At the same time, I want my children to be able to watch them on their current DVD players.

Last but not least, I'm a system's analyst and not afraid of complicated software. I think a general correction setting would work for most slides and scanning time is a factor. My computer is fast with 2Gb of fast RAM. Post scan corrections would save me time if that?s possible, and time is a factor in my purchase decision.

I don't seem to be able to reproduce what I see when I use a projector digitally.

you won't. Two things come to mind. 1) calibrate your crt with something like Monaco ez color 2) calibrate the scanner for the slide type you are using with an IT8 calibration utiility - SF or Monaco etc.

ll my scanned slides are much darker than what I see using a slide projector. I

Yep. check the gamma you are using with SF. Otherwise , calibration of the monitor will help

Time versus image accuracy - i'm, afraid the two don't meet in the middle. You can choose one or the other. IT8 calibration and auto settings may get you the time side of the equation, but for some of the slides you may want to go back and do manual adjustments. A batch feeder might help the time side, but i don't remember a batch feeder availible for that scanner.

If you ar scanning negs, then none of the above applies (ecxcept the monitor calibration), Sometimes SF does well with neg corrections, sometimes you have to develop your own set of curves.

www.computer-darkroom.com will give you some good tutorials.

www.luminous-landscape.com has a boatload of technical information on all aspects of image capture.