LaserSoft Imaging

I'm new at this, so I'm still figuring this out, but--

I have an 1800dpi film scanner that does hardware interpolation up to 7200 dpi. I don't think I understand the relation between the scanner resolution and SEplus' Frame dpi settings. For instance, when I scan I notice that I'm getting much better results if I force 1800dpi in SEplus' Frame settings and then reset the image dpi in an editor (like Gimp) than if I take one of the presets like 300dpi. While I'm sure that some hardware interpolation is happening, the resulting image dimensions are what I would expect for scans at both resolutions, but there is considerably more data in the 1800dpi Frame setting scan than the 300dpi Frame setting scan (50MB v. 3MB).

What's going on, and what should I use to maximize my scanner results without relying too heavily on hardware interpolation, or should I just go with what's looking better to me even if it's not making any sense at all?

-- C

Sounds like you are doing it correctly. You want to scan at the native optical PPI for the scanner - 1800 ppi for your scanner - if you want all you can get out of the image. Many image adjusting programs will have better algorithms for up/down sizing the ppi of the image than the scanner software.

BTW

www.scantips.com is a good introduction to scanning.

Of course the Silverfast book is a good introduction as well and more to the user interface and specifics.

Also read Ian Lyon's tutorials for Silverfast
www.computer-darkroom.com